Winter 2019 by DukeMagazine

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DUKE MAGAZINE • WINTER 2019

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WINTER 2019

Inventive approaches to teaching and mentoring set Duke apart. That’s why we never stop innovating. THANK YOU for your incredible support of professors like Brian Hare who help students achieve their wildest ambitions.

One Big Step See more stories of gratitude at: giving.duke.edu/thank-you Through gifts to the Annual Fund, planned giving and other contributions, the outrageously ambitious at Duke are forging an ever better world. What will you make possible?

An AIDS vaccine isn’t in hand. But lessons learned from fifteen years of probing by a global team led by Barton Haynes makes it seem possible.

M AG A Z I N E

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April 17-19, 2020 Celebrate. Reminisce. Reconnect. Come back to Duke Reunions and remember what it means to be Forever Duke. CELEBRATING THE CLASSES OF: 1960, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995,

2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and the Half Century Club

health powered

Learn more about the weekend, see who's coming, and add your name to the list:

Thanks to Tom ’71 and Lesley Allin P’03, the Duke Cancer Institute has an astounding new research fellow. Cutting-edge cancer research at Duke improves patient outcomes and saves lives. Research made possible by you.

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Finish the story at: giving.duke.edu/health-powered Through gifts to the Annual Fund, planned giving and other contributions, the outrageously ambitious at Duke are forging

(919) 681-8030

an ever better world. What will you make possible?

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INSIDE

Winter 2019 | Vol. 105 | No. 3

COVER

Alex Boerner

FEATURES:

FORUM

THE QUAD

Pratt freshmen get real, a little magic, women vs. men

A bold choice How going big, $600 million in grants, a Duke-led consortium of researchers from forty-three institutions, and fifteen years of work have led to new strategies in the quest to develop an AIDS vaccine. By Barry Yeoman

28 46 FOREVERDUKE

Fred Rogers Productions president and CEO PAUL SIEFKEN ’92 upholds a lofty legacy. Martha Rial

WORKINPROGRESS

Senior Kyle Harvey’s spiritual hand-carved relief prints

All the time in the world Students take different approaches to the unstructured challenge of the reading period. By Scott Huler

Norman Bendell

COVER: Barton Haynes in the lab Photo by Alex Boerner

SQUAD: Back row, Blue Devil women's basketball players Onome Akindobe-James, Jayda Adams, and Emily Schubert; front row, Corey Pilson and Jordan Laster. Image was shot with an Intrepid 4x5 camera on Polaroid type 55 pull-apart film that expired in 1964. See story on page 16. Photo by Reid Haithcock

FULLFRAME

Forum

UNDERTHEGARGOYLES

his issue’s long-planned cover story follows one researcher’s fixation on developing an AIDS vaccine. We could not have planned for what’s become a fresh global fixation, on the coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China. By late January, it had disrupted university-supported travel to China and had rejiggered the academic calendar at Duke Kunshan University. The coronavirus beat has become a mainstay for Emily Feng ’15, the Beijing correspondent for NPR and a former Duke Magazine contributor. Her early reporting painted scenes of eerily calm, strangely deserted cities; overstretched medical staffs; and the official inclination to punish “rumor-mongering,” even as Wuhan’s mayor was “holding holiday banquets for 40,000 people and encouraging travelers to vacation in the city during the Lunar New Year holiday.” That was weeks after Chinese public-health officials had been deployed to investigate the new illness. Feng also reported on a sort of pop-up hospital in Wuhan to quarantine patients; that project mirrored efforts to quarantine Beijing-area patients during the 2003 SARS epidemic. Such tales of parallel outbreaks resonated for those of us with long Duke Magazine memories. “Life in the Time of Plague,” a story sparked by SARS, ran in July-August 2003. The writer was Phil Tinari ’01, a former intern for the magazine, who had just returned from two years living and working in Beijing and was doing graduate work in East Asian studies at Harvard. Tinari’s uncomfortably firsthand look at SARS came after he had been hired to work as a researcher and translator for The New York Times bureau in Beijing. On his second day on the job, he went with the Times’ two bureau chiefs to Guangdong province. They interviewed “snake and civet mongers” in the meat markets where the virus might have jumped from animals to humans.

The coronavirus beat, like SARS before it, has produced eye-opening reporting.

CONTAGIOUS: An illustration of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. Later that week, “we were the first foreign journalists to make a SARS-inspired visit to the provincial capital of Taiiyuan,” he wrote, “snooping around the grounds of the Shanxi Province People’s Hospital that was feared to harbor the first cases.” Tinari saw a harking back to Cultural Revolution groupthink. Slogans were unleashed appealing for solidarity (“In the face of adversity, the unity of the masses is an impregnable fortress”); discounting any emotion-driven panic (“Depend on science; overcome SARS”); and highlighting the heroes who would make it all right (SARS would be “conquered by the government and the Communist Party of China”). SARS had fundamentally shaken, but not fundamentally altered China, Tinari concluded. “A few weeks would go by, and things would be largely back to normal. Another few weeks would go by, and I would get on a plane and go home, for good.” That wasn’t quite the case. Tinari went on to become an expert in Chinese art—as a curator, founding editor of the Chinese edition of Artforum, and now head of the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, which, in addition to championing young artists, offered the first major survey of Picasso in China. In late January, UCCA’s website was carrying a stark (English-language) message embedded in a big block of red: The center would be closed until further notice. “We are sorry for any inconvenience caused and our hearts go out to all those affected by the spread of the virus.”—Robert J. Bliwise, editor

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019 | Vol. 105 | No. 3 | www.DUKEMAGAZINE.duke.edu

EDITOR: Robert J. Bliwise A.M. ’88 MANAGING EDITOR: Adrienne Johnson Martin SENIOR WRITER: Scott Huler STAFF WRITER: Corbie Hill CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Christina Holder M.Div. ’13 STAFF ASSISTANT: Delecia Hatcher PUBLISHER: Sterly L. Wilder ’83, associate vice president, Alumni Affairs SPECIAL SECTIONS EDITOR: Bridgette Lacy ART DIRECTOR: Lacey Chylack, phase5creative, inc. PRINTER: Progress Printing OFFICERS, DUKE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION: Laura Meyer Wellman ’73, president, Sterly L. Wilder ’83, secretary-treasurer DUKE MAGAZINE Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 PHONE: (919) 684-5114 FAX: (919) 681-1659 E-MAIL: dukemag@duke.edu ADDRESS CHANGES: Alumni Records, Box 90581, Durham, N.C. 27708 or bluedevil@duke.edu • © 2020 Duke University, Published five times a year by the Duke Alumni Association. 4 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Coronavirus illustration courtesy Wikipedia

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A tall tale

I enjoyed reading Marlin M. Volz Jr.’s summary of Duke basketball through the early ’60s [Letters & Comments, Fall 2019]. I came to Duke for graduate school in the fall of 1966 just after their peak. Two particularly frustrating losses that year came in back-to-back games in Pauley Pavilion with UCLA, who went on that season to be the NCAA champion. The Saturday night game

DUKE MAGAZINE • FALL 2019

Letters&Comments

M AG A Z I N E

FALL 2019

was on national TV. Several days later, I was wandering the campus looking for a working phone and ended up in a line for a phone booth in the men’s quad. Stuffed into the booth, bent almost in half was the largest young man I’d ever see, the 7-foot, 6-inch Duke center Mike Lewis, who had had a particularly rough road trip. I could easily hear his WELCOME! A special place just for you. plaintive plea for mercy from an obvious critic, “But Mom, he was so-o-o

UPDATE A profile in the July-August 1992 issue featured a young art collector and gallery owner, Jason Rubell ’91, then just beginning to make a mark on the South Florida art scene. As the story put it, Rubell shies away from “artese,” the “highbrow language that leaves non-aesthetes scratching their heads”; to the contrary, he advocated the idea that “art can have meaning in their lives.” His collecting habits would bring that idea to full expression. Rubell had grown up watching his gynecologist father and real-estate executive mother embrace works by emerging artists. He accompanied them on their weekly gallery treks and, at fourteen, he began his own collection. In a New York gallery, he ran across a painting called “Immigrants,” which shows a minotaur and a faceless human figure; that became his first purchase, which he was able to afford with money saved from stringing tennis rackets. (Jason's son, Samuel, is a “He displayed freshman standout on Duke’s tennis team.) remarkable “Before long Rubell was channeling allowance, birthflair for day, and bar mitzvah money into his burgeoning collecacquiring tion,” according to the story. “He displayed remarkable flair for acquiring works by rising stars.” Among them works by rising stars.” were Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, and Cindy Sherman. Rubell’s opening show, in Palm Beach, drew more than 300 people, earned glowing reviews, and landed him in Vogue magazine’s “People Are Talking About” section. Earlier this winter, Vogue was just one of the publications celebrating the new Rubell Museum, originally built on works acquired by Jason’s parents, Don and Mera, and now relocated and expanded in a one-time industrial hub of Miami. With some 7,200 works of contemporary art, the Rubell Museum sprawls across 100,000 square feet of six former industrial buildings and houses forty galleries. In late January, it also housed “An Evening With Duke’s Best and Brightest,” a Duke Alumni Association program that drew several hundred Miami-area alumni and featured President Vincent E. Price. n

The human factor

A researcher’s groundbreaking work explains what separates us from other primates XX

r Cente isitors

V ! EN mni & GE 18 lu PA OP W Karsh A SEE NO Bill Snead

big!” His reference was, of course, to Lew Alcindor, well on his way to being the incomparable Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jean V. Smith M.A.T. ’71 Media, Pennsylvania CLARIFICATION

In “Something for the People,” about the home gallery run by Frank Konhaus ’80 and his wife, Ellen Cassilly, published in the Fall 2019 issue, credits for the work shown in accompanying photos were missing. In the opening image on pages 38 and 39, the photo installation is CST #2 by Philip Augustin and the other images in the gallery are by Augustin and Elizabeth Stone. The tintype photographs of Konhaus and Cassilly are by Geoffrey Berliner at the Penumbra Foundation.

SEND LETTERS TO: Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 or e-mail dukemag@duke.edu. Please limit letters to 300 words and include your full name, address, and class year or Duke affiliation. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. Owing to space constraints, we are unable to print all letters received. Published letters represent the range of responses received. For additional letters: www.dukemagazine.duke.edu.

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

Megan Mendenhall

NEIGH: Relaxing with a therapy horse

Reagan Lunn

FREE: The fare available on Public Domain Day

FETCH: Blue Devils get a puppy break.

Quad

THE Megan Mendenhall

LIFE ON CAMPUS FROM EAST TO WEST

IN GEAR: Bass Connections gets $5 million from Fortin

BRR: Winter on East Campus

Noelle Li

Jared Lazarus

STRETCH: Community Dance Day at the Ruby

dukephotoaday

Megan Mendenhall

CHEESE: Former Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum at MLK celebration

EN POINTE: Nutcracker duo

THEQuad

DR/TL* Brief mentions of things going on among Duke researchers, scholars, and other enterprises

ANIMALS AND MICROBES

MISCELLANY

Bacteria buy time to defend themselves from viruses and other dangerous elements by creating decoy spots for attack. The decoy spots act as traps, keeping the viruses busy while the bacteria develop long-term resistance strategies. ➔ Improved methods for mammal tracing and observation show that sonar and other noises faced by marine mammals are louder than previously thought and more strongly correlated with beach strandings. ➔ When you break a bone, your body naturally increases production of the healing biochemical adenosine, though that adenosine is quickly metabolized. Researchers wrapped broken bones of mice with a special bandage that kept the natural adenosine in the area and found the bones healed better. Bandages loaded with additional adenosine helped, too. ➔ Speaking of mouse bones, an experiment on mice revealed that certain biochemical receptors can be activated that can not only prevent the bone loss of osteoporosis but also encourage rebuilding of bone. A hopeful sign for human bones.

Using aerial and satellite imagery, researchers may be able to identify forests at greatest risk from climate change, ideally in time for protective measures. ➔ New tiny, chip-scale photodetectors can use the science of plasmonics to track nanoscale physical phenomena to trap frequencies of light beyond the visual. Potential uses could include telling the difference between cancerous and healthy tissue and when a chicken breast is contaminated with dangerous bacteria. ➔ After perusing a bunch of photos, a computer can look at a picture of a bird and identify it from among up to 200 species. It also explains what it’s looking at to come to its decision. Next for the computer: mammograms.

PEOPLE The force of a raindrop hitting the windshield of a jet traveling at supersonic speeds creates a two-dimensional wave that can cause a specific kind of circular crack in the windshield. The force that creates those cracks may turn out to be useful in demolishing kidney stones. ➔ A drug successfully treating breast cancer for decades has been resistant to an understanding of exactly how it works. It turns out it seems to work through antibody-dependent phagocytosis, which is a way that specific immune cells engulf and eat particles, specifically tumor cells coated with a particular antibody. This understanding might enable the introduction of an additional antibody to remove obstacles in the process of tumor cell death. ➔ People who have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to choose to use nicotine, and they like it more than people without the condition. ➔ One reason we have no vaccine for HIV is because our immune systems perceive the early antibodies that neutralize it as dangerous and shuts down their production. It turns out maybe the immune system can be coaxed into making those antibodies. ➔ You can make a laser that lives in the gap between infrared light and microwaves. It’s highly tuneable, and it can see through clothes and suitcases but isn’t dangerous like X-rays. ➔ How teens feel about family status is a more-accurate predictor of their well-being than their actual status.

DUKE Cosmologist Daniel Scolnic won the prestigious Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, given each year to a coterie of promising early-career scientists, who each receive of funding over five years. Scolnic plans to continue his study of the Hubble Constant, which is used to measure the expansion rate of the universe. Scolnic’s research doesn’t agree with the constant, so now he has the funding to find out whether his research or Hubble’s needs updating. ➔ Senior Gabriella Deich, an Angier B. Duke Scholar, has been named Duke’s fiftieth Rhodes Scholar. She is Duke’s fifth Rhodes Scholar in three years. ➔ Two Duke students (seniors Charles Berman of Durham and Max Labaton of Washington, D.C.) and three alumni (2019 graduates Yunjie Lai of Chongquing, China, and Kevin Zheng of Glenelg, Maryland, and 2017 graduate Steven Soto of Phoenix) were chosen as Schwarzman Scholars, spending a year earning a fully funded master’s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University in China. ➔ Economist Philip Cook of the Sanford School of Public Policy has won the 2020 Stockholm Prize in recognition of his decades of research into gun violence and its effects. ➔ With a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Duke will set up the Duke Environmental Analysis Laboratory, which will help identify chemicals in the environment that may be dangerous. ➔ In its efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine, the Duke Human Vaccine Institute has received three research contracts from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that could eventually pay up to $400 million over seven years. n

$875,000

Go to dukemagazine.duke.edu for links to further details and original papers.

* Didn't Read?/Too Long? Well, we did, and now we're all smarter. 8

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insets:istock

ROOMMATES

WHERE'S HOME? THE HOLLOWS Alex Torres HOMETOWN: Fort Lauderdale, Florida MAJOR: Psychology ETC: Morning person; Taylor Swift fan ON LAUREL: “She’s always there, will always be down to do whatever, no matter what.”

Laurel Zhang HOMETOWN: Guilford, Connecticut MAJOR: Economics and public policy ETC: Blue Devil fencer (foil); Can’t stand Taylor Swift ON ALEX: “She’s really funny. I don’t like telling her because then she gets all excited about it.”

THE SENIORS met as freshmen when they lived down the hall from each other in Brown. “My roommate and I got along but we had very different personalities,” says Alex, “so I would always go to Laurel’s room. She always kept her door open for me.” They’ve been roommates every year since. Laurel’s heading to New York with a job in finance; Alex is looking for a gap-year position before heading to medical school. So, for spring break, they’re taking a girls’ trip. “Alex and I, along with some of our suitemates, we’re going to New Orleans. We spent all of college being friends, but we’ve never taken a trip. We want to take this last opportunity.” —Adrienne Johnson Martin, photography by Chris Hildreth

THEQuad

FROMTHEPRESIDENT

e imagine boundaries between students, faculty, staff, alumni, but in truth, Duke is just one large intellectual community—a community of people who are curious, who want to make a difference in the world,

who understand that we won’t get where we need to go without access to other people who can challenge us, who know things we don’t know, who can push us to be our best. It is critical that Duke recommit to educating for a lifetime. And I like to think in doing so, we’ll recover perhaps the oldest model of higher education. When universities were created in the middle ages, they were guilds of scholars who decided to gather together around libraries—the research infrastructure of the day—and when we give degrees (in Latin, I might add), we’re very medieval about the whole thing. We put on medieval gowns and regalia, but we forget that those degrees are not actually certificates of completion. That’s not what they are intended to be. They are ranks in the guild: You’re a bachelor, you’re a master, you’re a doctor. In other words, when you graduate from a place like Duke, you don’t leave. You join. The fact is, your education is what happens after you’re at Duke. It’s not what actually happens when you’re on campus. I don’t want anybody to feel that in terms of the life of their mind, their best years were at Duke. I’d like to think that we got you started, and the best years were afterward. And if we can, as a community, lean on each other through those years, how extraordinary would that be? Because in the alumni community, we have people with a remarkable breadth of expertise and experience. And if we can mobilize all of that—help each other, support each other—the sky is truly the limit. So we have to start delivering more of that to every member of the Duke family, to really give meaning in life to this notion of lifelong education. That’s what Duke’s future is really all about. —President Vincent E. Price Miami, Florida January 2020

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BLUE: Duke South Florida alumni, family, and friends joined President Price for an evening of new research and strategic priorities.

Meeting alumni far and wide

PRESIDENTIAL EVENTS FROM THE PAST FEW MONTHS:

November

2019

ON CAMPUS: Kicked off the tenth DEMAN Weekend. DEMAN (the Duke Entertainment, Media, and Arts Network) includes workshops and lectures sponsored by Duke’s arts departments, career panels, résumé and portfolio reviews, the Duke’s Got Talent show, and a keynote conversation with creative-industry leaders. RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART: In conversation with Diego Bohorquez (medicine) and Nita Farahany (law)

CHICAGO, ART INSTITUTE: In conversation with Jonathan Mattingly (mathematics) and Jenny Tung ’03, Ph.D. ’10 (evolutionary anthropology and biology)

January

2020

MIAMI, RUBELL MUSEUM: In conversation with Charles A. Gersbach (biomedical engineering) and Megan Mullin (environmental politics)

Upcoming HOUSTON DALLAS SEATTLE

February ON CAMPUS: Duke Women’s Weekend. Gave the welcome address before the opening plenary session. The weekend brings back alumnae to explore interests, hear new perspectives, seek advice, and engage with other alumnae and the university.

PAST PRESIDENTIAL EVENT LOCALES: Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Charlotte, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, and London DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

Head first and hands on In the First-Year Design program, Pratt freshmen tackle real-world engineering challenges.

PLASTICS: Trash piles up along Ellerbe Creek; opposite, Ellerbe volunteer Pond and hiking partner Maddie have seen it.

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THEQuad THEQuad

cold rain falls on Durham. with the foundations and resources to find Per the laws of physics, when and maintain their footing. the water hits the ground it For this team, that experience takes place in runs downhill. It follows the the Design Pod—the glass-walled ovoid that path of least resistance, carrying with it the until 2017 housed the café Blue Express—but detritus of American consumer culture— also in a wetlands preserve tucked behind a Pepsi bottles, potato chip bags, six-pack North Durham shopping center. The aptly rings, Miller Lite cans. It flows along named Beaver Marsh is one of ECWA’s five roadsides and into storm drains. It emerges public preserves, and on its thirty-four acres from culverts, where Lilliputian cascades Pond has seen bald eagles, snapping turtles, feed ditches and gullies. It washes a cornumink, otters, coyotes, and even one enormous copia of garbage into Ellerbe Creek. wild turkey. The FYD students weren’t the “We just keep feeding the beast,” says Ian Pond, observing first engineers here, Pond points out: The beavers who built the creek several days before the storm. That day, the water level a sizable lodge in the center of the marsh diligently maintain was several feet lower, leaving bright strips of plastic visible on channels deep enough to kayak in and a tiered system of dams Ellerbe’s banks, in the underbrush, and tangled in low-hanging that Pond compares to the locks of the Suez Canal. branches. Pond, board secretary of Ellerbe Creek Watershed AsECWA has worked with FYD students since the program’s sociation (ECWA), knows that Ellerbe Creek feeds Falls Lake— pilot year in 2017, making this the third team to design a Raleigh’s reservoir—where he’s seen trash islands a hundred feet trash trap. Teams one and two used mesh in their designs, wide, forty feet deep, and dense enough to stand on. which captured too much natural debris and caused the traps A few miles south, a small team of Duke freshmen is to clog, sink, or break, or positioned their traps in the creek working to help starve the beast—that, or at least mitigate the itself, which swells to a dynamic torrent after a hard rain. The amount of trash that 2019 team’s trap abanmakes it from street to dons mesh entirely and “If we fail, that just means next year’s stream. Mia Thompis designed to sit about team will have another thing to rule out.” fifteen feet downstream son, Danny Gonzalez, Davis Finfrock, from a culvert; if this Jihyeon “JJ” Je, and Shaan Gondalia are five of the 300-plus approach works, it’ll be replicated below other storm drains. Pratt School of Engineering freshmen enrolled in the required If not? First-Year Design (FYD) program, and designing an effective “Personally, I think we all really, really want this to work trash trap is this team’s semester-long project. Working out of better than the past few years,” says Thompson. “If we fail, the Design Pod or the Foundry, carved a few years ago into another thing to rule out.” the basement of Gross Hall, other teams work to fit the needs This is by design, says FYD director Ann Saterbak, who of the Duke Lemur Center, Skanska (the construction cominstituted this program when she came to Duke from Rice pany responsible for many of the campus’ recent buildings), University in 2017. Project-based design courses are typically the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, and a range of reserved for upperclassmen, with the frosh learning princiorganizations and individuals. A few months ago, Thompson, ples first, application later. By the FYD approach, however, Gonzalez, Finfrock, Je, Gondalia, and their classmates were nascent engineers learn to swim by swimming—and they’re high-school seniors. Now they’re facing engineering challenges encouraged to learn from failure rather than view it as defeat. with real-world ramifications—and potential for real-world “The idea of iteration is kind of baked into the course,” innovation. In prior years, a book holder designed for David Saterbak says. “The grading system is not punitive toward M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library and an mistakes, and the faculty, the TAs, we celebrate learning rather adjustable painting hook developed for the Nasher Museum than perfection.” have both made their way to the patent process. Pond takes an engineer’s mindset, too. Since 2017, each trap The design-driven curriculum “has thrown us head-first into has crept closer and closer to the source of the trash, moving doing hands-on engineering,” Finfrock says. “I really like that. upstream and out of the creek and into the ditches and gullies It brings together all [types of ] engineers, and you can comthat feed it. And this year’s iteration could be the one that bine a lot of aspects of engineering into one single project.” catches litter before it can wash into Falls Lake—that, or it FYD feels less like a class in the traditional sense, Thompson could be one more step toward the final design. adds, but is more about providing Duke engineering students “We’ll see,” says Pond.—Text and photography by Corbie Hill DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

THEQuad

Toy story?

A radiology research fellow and the mystery of a collection of manikins

n the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room at the Rubenstein Library, Duke radiology research fellow Fides Schwartz unrolls a little hand-sized puff of bubble wrap and lays out on the table all the pieces of a neat, slightly translucent white medical manikin, about six inches tall. The body of a woman: She’s pregnant, and her midsection lifts off, revealing removable heart, lungs, baby. “You see?” Schwartz asks. “Actually it does all fit together.” She points out the details: “The little baby holding its hands up to its face,” she notes in delight, and to be sure, the baby, about the size of the nail on your pinkie, is curled up, its little hands in fists on either side of its head. The manikins aren’t new—they’re old and rather mysterious, part of the collection of medical materials (equip-

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ment, manuscripts, and an unforgettable tray of glass eyes) donated by Trent and his widow, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans ’39. The twenty-two manikins are tiny, intricately carved anatomical dolls probably made in the late seventeenth century in Germany. They were long thought to be tools for medical teaching, but that now seems unlikely, Schwartz notes, since it turns out they were made of ivory, which is pretty expensive maRESTING: Below, with terial for something students finely upholstered were going to handle a lot. wooden beds and even They’re now suspected to be clothes, the medical collectibles or perhaps even manikins are now toys. thought to be collectibles That they’re definitely or even toys. made of ivory is something

Schwartz has helped figure out. There are fewer than 200 of these figurines worldwide, so as an effort toward protection and understanding, the library began having the manikins scanned in 2018. The one Schwartz carried around was, in fact, a 3D print made as a result of those scans. “The goal is to share them [through both image and 3D print] to a wider audience that ranges from medical professors, to students, to art historians,” says librarian Rachel Ingold. And, not incidentally, radiology research fellows. Schwartz read about the scans and reached out to Ingold. “Librarians love helping people,” Ingold says. Says Schwartz, “So I was allowed to look at all the scans and to attend a scan, too.” As a radiologist, she says she thought, “If we have a CT scan of it, we can

The goal is to share them through both image and 3D print to a wider audience that ranges from medical professors, to students, to art historians. do more with it than just look at the surface.” In fact, those are micro-CT scans, which enable viewers to look down to the cellular level, enabling Schwartz to make her diagnosis of the manikins’ makeup. Micro-CT scans have a resolution from forty to 100 micrometers. A human hair is about 100 micrometers wide, and a cell is about fifty micrometers, so the scans enabled Schwartz to recognize the cellular structure of the manikins’ material. “Almost all of them are wholly made of ivory,” she says. “One seems to be made of deer antler, and one, most is ivory and one piece is whalebone.” Elephant or mammal ivory is easy to recognize: “because it’s a tooth,” she says. “Layers of dentin, very densely packed, it looks a little like tree rings. As soon as you see one slice you know.” Bone, on the other hand, has a different structure, including Haversian canals—tubes for blood vessels and nerves. Whales live underwater, and their bones are buoyed by the sea, so whalebone canals are more rounded than the ones in deer antlers. And by the way, yes, antlers are bone,

Photography courtesy Duke University Libraries

unlike, say, rhinoceros horns, which are more like claws or hair. “I learned this through this project,” Schwartz makes clear, laughing; she didn’t come to Duke an expert in ivory, antler, and whalebone. Encouraged by her fellowship mentors and supported by a panoply of Duke technicians, scholars, and doctors (the research has seven coauthors), Schwartz submitted her findings to the Radiological Society of North America for its annual meeting. About 13,500 abstracts are submitted for presentation, of which the society accepts about a tenth. The results presented by Schwartz were not only accepted but chosen as one of the dozen or so highlighted in the conference news release. This led to press briefings and stories all over the world. “I was not expecting anything like that,” Schwartz says. It’s an unexpected world. Not long after the manikins results, Schwartz was watching scans of objects for Duke’s Nasher Museum.—Scott Huler LAYERS: Top, one of the scans of the manikins, showing the level of internal detail now available; a 3D print of another

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

SPORTS

MEN AT WORK

When these guys practice with the women’s basketball team, everybody gets a challenge. | BY SCOTT HULER, PHOTOGRAPHY BY REID HAITHCOCK

t the end of a nice three-pass sequence started by senior Corey Pilson, the ball ends up in the hands of junior Nate Tewell streaking inside. Tewell catches the ball under the hoop and completes the play with a smooth reverse, a high-level play by high-level players. No applause, though. The seats are empty, and the few people on the Cameron benches are coaches or resting players like redshirt freshman Mikayla Boykin, idly spinning a ball on her forefinger. It’s just practice, and most of the players are women: It’s practice for the women’s team. “The men just help us to challenge ourselves in practice,” says special assistant Keturah Jackson ’09, herself an all-ACC player who practiced against men during her time at Duke. “They’re such an important part of our preparation. Not just strength and quickness, but having bodies for the scout team,” to run the plays of an upcoming opponent without reducing court time for the women running Duke plays. Bigger, faster, stronger opponents and bodies for opposition: It’s easy to see what the team gets out of it. But what about the guys? Guys who get up at 6 a.m. to come practice for hours before class, bodying up against players who outplay them despite their size advantage? Guys who practice for six to ten hours a week and never get to run onto the floor in front of a cheering crowd, much less play in front of one? “Well, they do feed us,” says Pilson, a political science major working for a certificate in documentary studies. True enough: The post-practice breakfast the men share with the team would hold its own in a hotel lobby. But Pilson laughs; that’s not why he’s here. He loves the team and the coaches, he says, but also “it’s a chance to play basketball with people who can play basketball.” He’s like most of the half-dozen or so guys who practice with the women’s team every year: A ballplayer in high school who had peaked by his senior season, he knew he wasn’t going to play for fans at Duke, but he wanted more challenge than he found in intramural or pickup games. Running plays and working to challenge the women keeps his skills sharp: “If I get crossed up, I want to go home and practice. They make me want to get better.” Tewell, a junior neuroscience and psychology major, had a somewhat harder call. He was planning to attend—and play for—Johns Hopkins, but then he got into

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“If I get crossed up, I want to go home and practice. They make me want to get better.”

CATCH: Freshman Jordan Laster (4) and guard Azana Baines (11) listen to direction from head coach Joanne P. McCallie. DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

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Duke, where he wouldn’t even make the men’s squad SCRIMMAGE: From as a walk-on. Not willing to turn down Duke, he left, forward/center Onome Akinbodelooked for another outlet for his first-rate skills, James; Laster and ending up playing a rec-center game where he was guard Jayda Adams; noticed by player Kyra Lambert, who was there senior Corey Pilson rehabbing. “She asked if I was interested in working with the women,” and Tewell was in; he often spends with center Emily Schubert twenty hours a week working with the team now. Getting noticed on the rec floor was how it all started, says Gail Goestenkors, Duke’s head coach from 1992 to 2007. She says she went looking for men to post up against her players after the 199394 season, when the University of North Carolina women won the NCAA championship and Goestenkors got tired of her team getting personhandled. “Marion Jones was there,” she recalls, “and they were so much bigger than we were, and more physical.” She and another coach “went over to the rec gym and watched guys play pickup.” Those who were best they invited

“I hurt when I see them lose.” out, and a new aspect of team practice was born. Goestenkors doesn’t take credit for bringing men into the women’s practice—she thinks it was beginning at other programs at the same time—but she knows it helped. “We ended up beating Carolina that year.” And if the practice men get none of the glory, they get some of the credit. And blame, too, if something goes wrong. “I hurt when I see them lose,” Pilson says. “If there’s something we practiced and they don’t do it in the game, I’ll get mad. ‘We practiced that!’ ” “That has to be your mentality,” Tewell says. “There’s nothing holding us here except for love of the game and love of these guys. “And a couple of T-shirts a year.” n DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

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PALE SMOKE seeps from holes in the

the grass. Hall is a second-generation Durham firefighter who has served the city since 1987, while his father’s career started in ’61. Today he trains a new generation. See the firefighter leaning on that truck? Hall asks. He grew up with my son. I coached him when he was ten. Indeed, the coaching continues, as overseeing training is one of Hall’s major roles. Some of the firefighters in attendance today are fresh to the department, though a training burn in this kind of building is a rare opportunity benefiting everyone. Most of the time, Hall says, the department is offered houses in lousy condition— many of them already condemned—and it’s just not the same. It’s rare to train in a multifamily dwelling, as Hall describes this type of building, and one in decent condition at that. Hall and Young take this exercise seriously. Though the burn is under control and the building is surrounded by trucks, this is still real fire. One firefighter emerges with his protective Durham firefighters use Central Campus apartments for training. gear scorched. He drops his battered helmet in the grass and explains dow bursts outward with a rain of broken glass that a ceiling fan fell on him, a hint of fatigue and a plume of gray smoke. And then the fire creeping into his voice. This man was just inside starts in earnest. Red and black flames and thick a burning building. columns of sooty smoke emerge from ventilaYou can’t see much in front of you, thanks to the tion holes one team of firefighters already cut smoke, Young says. It’s nothing like the movies. through the shingles. Sections of roof collapse. And unlike the movies, this is real danger. The ladders come out. The attack team suits Young watches the burning building, his affable up and climbs the exterior stairs. Firefighters expression turning grave. Then he says what he’s move through the burning building, their silthinking: Please remind your readers to change houettes occasionally visible through now-glassthe batteries in their smoke detectors. For Young, less windows. High-powered hoses blast the fire it’s not a rote Public Service Announcement, from within. Jets of water knock aside sections but a question of life or death. of already weakened roof and arc another thirty, It’s approaching noon, and soon the DFD will forty feet through the air, soaking nearby trees. put out the fire completely and break for lunch. Within ten minutes, flames no longer dance on With the flames gone and blackened beams the roof, and 1915 Yearby merely smolders. visible through gaping holes in its roof, 1915 It’s late November, and most of Central CamYearby looks like some enormous, partially eaten pus is being razed to make way for whatever carcass. The morning’s teams, their training comes next. Granted, many buildings are being complete, will return to duty, while fresh teams demolished the old-fashioned way—with bullfrom across the city will arrive to train in these dozers—but the destruction of several former apartments. And then the afternoon fire will be student housing units serves a dual purpose. In set, and once again Durham’s firefighters will go their last educational act, these apartments are toward danger. being used to train firefighters. It’s what they do. —Text and photography by Corbie Hill Assistant Chief Willie Hall Jr. watches from roof of 1915 Yearby Avenue. Minuscule flames lick the eaves tentatively, cautiously, like swimmers dipping their toes in cold seawater. Firefighters from the Durham Fire Department stand by their trucks. They’re waiting for the fire to grow before they go in. And it grows. A second-story window warps visibly as tongues of rich orange flicker in the room behind. Step back, says Captain David Young. The veteran firefighter is decked out in many pounds of firefighting gear—face mask, oxygen tank, heavy coat and boots, the works— while I’m the model of inutility in my khakis, cardigan, and favorite pair of Adidas sneakers. I back up a few steps and soon enough the win-

The roof is on fire

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Corbie Hill

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Please remind your readers to change the batteries in their smoke detectors.

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Peace of mind needn’t be an illusion Using sleight-of-hand to help students get through the chaos

he first rule of magic is not to trust magicians, Szigethy, associate dean and director of DuWell, offers a says Duke Sleight Club president Wesley Pritzlaff. succinct explanation: These are activities that ground one in The second is not to forget what your card is. the present moment, which is happiness, rather than the past, He absently shuffles a deck as he talks, as do which is regret, or the future, which is fear. many of the dozen or so students in attendance. These concepts aren’t new, Szigethy continues. Chinese It’s not long after a spectacular sunset, the kind Baoding balls or Tibetan singing bowls operate on a similar that causes Duke Chapel to glow golden orange as shadows principle to the Moments of Mindfulness offerings. There’s an lengthen toward it, and Pritzlaff, a junior, is leading a sleightemphasis on focusing the mind through simple movements, of-hand session in the Student Wellness concentration, and digital dexterity. More Center’s Oasis West room. He shares perrecent inventions that operate on the same formance tips (the more choices a magician principle include fidget spinners and Rubik’s gives their spectators, the better) and misdiCubes. rection techniques (hide smaller movements “The cards can be your anchor,” says within larger movements; if you look your Pritzlaff. Learning a new trick is cognitively audience in the eyes, they won’t look at your demanding, both in terms of mastering hand hands). Pritzlaff offers alternatives (if you motions and maintaining the patter that keeps have a hard time spreading the cards, don’t audiences at once misdirected and entertained. stress it; there are other techniques), even as Even a few seconds of silence can allow a he reveals what the magician’s hands do bespectator’s attention to wander; can allow the tween “pick a card” and “is this your card?” spectator to look too closely at what the magi“That’s where the magic happens,” he says. cian is doing with his or her hands. There’s more to this than wowing friends Pritzlaff, a neuroscience major, shares his and strangers with deft card tricks, Pritzlaff passion through Duke Sleight Club and believes. This evening’s sleight-of-hand Moments of Mindfulness, sure, but he has MAGIC: Watching a card trick session, for instance, is part of DuWell’s the long game in mind as he develops his card Moments of Mindfulness tricks. He pictures his future programming (DuWell is self a physical therapist who a branch of the Student does magic on the side, Wellness Center). Other but without erecting walls recurring Moments of Mindfulness include yoga, knitting, between the two interests. drum circles, tea ceremonies, and meditation. The gist is that For Pritzlaff, magic has always been about connecting with students arrive with all the chaos and baggage of their day, others, which is a major reason he feels it can be incorporated their week—what have you—and depart calm, grounded, into physical therapy. A magic trick is meaningless without and present. There’s no mental space to perseverate when one an audience to entertain, he posits, while therapy isn’t therapy is learning a card trick that requires focus, digital dexterity, without a patient. If Pritzlaff is going to learn something, he’s coordination, and close attention. going to share it. And if he’s going to share something, he’s And that’s where the magic happens. going to want to improve someone’s day in the process—even “You truly have to be in the present moment to be able to if it takes intense focus. coordinate hand-eye movement to a degree to stay present “You’re static if you’re just practicing the same things,” with the person you’re presenting it to—especially if you’re Pritzlaff says, simultaneously describing magic and therapy. doing fast movements to try and hide things that you’re do“You have to push yourself, develop a plan of how you move ing,” says Thomas Szigethy. “When they leave that one-hour forward.” session they’re feeling better about themselves and they’re And that’s where the magic happens. —Corbie Hill, photography by Les Todd feeling less stressed.”

“The cards can be your anchor.”

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

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What do you call it?

One of the joys of working in discovery is naming what you find.

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Duke Lemur Center

long, low creature, looking like a cross between a coyote and an otter, moved through something akin to a mangrove swamp. It had stumpy legs and a long skull full of sharp teeth. On land, it slunk between fruiting trees in whose branches lounged the earliest monkeys. Fourtusked and hippo-like elephants trundled nearby in this lush, tropical proto-Nile ecosystem. When this creature took to the river, it shared the water with early manatees. It was 34 million years ago—the end of the Eocene—and today’s familiar mammals were establishing themselves and diversifying. Yet not all forms of life would flourish. Eventually the long, low semiaquatic something went extinct, followed eventually by its entire order. Today, its fossilized remains occupy a drawer in the Division of Fossil Primates’ unassuming brick building a few blocks north of East awaiting a scien“We know Nefertiti Campus, tific name. from a head that’s a That task will fall to bust, and we know Division of Fossil Primates curator Matt Borths, who nefertiticyon from can read these bones like a a busted head.” book. Borths is an expert in creodonts—the hyaenodont clade in particular—which preceded the modern order Carnivora as the planet’s dominant meat-eating mammals. He has named five species officially and has two more on deck. “It’s an incredible responsibility and a rush, just in the sense that this is something that will theoretically last for as long as humans are talking about organisms,” says Borths. Michael Windham, Duke Herbarium’s curator of vascular plants, knows the feeling. Since 1991, he has named dozens of ferns, mustard plants, and sunflowers, though if one counts nomenclature transfers (moving a species from one genus to another), that number jumps to the hundreds. “I’m a discovery junkie,” Windham declares. Taxonomy takes many steps. A paper must be written, reviewed, and published. The taxonomist community

FOUND: Borths makes a must decide whether the discovery in Egypt. author has made a valid case. Acceptance occurs when the majority of scientists in the field start using that name. Once that is all done, what had been just another misidentified fern specimen becomes the holotype—that is, the prime specimen—of a freshly described species. “This holotype is the thing that is called Akhnatenavus nefertiticyon,” Borths says, holding the flattened, fossilized skull of a hyaenodont he named in 2016. “The original is this, so every comparison has to come back to this thing.” A scientific name’s primary purpose is to efficiently express an organism’s properties. The species name ecuadorensis, for instance, for an Ecuadorian fern, or nefertiticyon for a doglike creature from Egypt. Within taxonomy’s conventions, however, there’s room for wordplay and injokes. “We know Nefertiti from a head that’s a bust, and we know nefertiticyon from a busted head,” Borths says, as he grins. Maybe it’s the age of the fossils surrounding him, or maybe it’s creodonts’ success—they thrived twice as long as modern carnivorous mammals have—but Borths is modest, almost humble, about his role. Taxonomists, he says, make a small contribution by signaling that a lineage exists—or existed. That it survived for a certain amount of time. That this is how it survived. That this is what made it special. That this is something we didn’t know life could do. “The animals don’t need to know that,” Borths says. “They don’t care about that. It’s just hyper-intelligent monkeys that care.”—Corbie Hill

PETER UBEL is the author of Sick to Debt: How Smarter Markets Lead to Better Care. He’s a professor of business, public policy, and medicine. Is there a just-right model for health care somewhere? The United Kingdom has a completely socialized, topdown system that works fairly well. Then there’s Germany, where the system is built on heavily regulated private insurance, and it meets their needs pretty well. There are lots of ways to get it right, though no system is perfect. The U.S. has found lots of ways to get it wrong.

You write about Germany, in the era of Bismarck, as an illustration of moral hazard—that is, how lowering the price of medical care can also lower the individual’s motivation to make smart decisions. At the end of the nineteenth century, more and more Germans were moving from small farming communities to larger cities. If a farmer broke his wrist, his family and neighbors could take over his chores until he recovered. If a factory worker broke his wrist,

he might face financial ruin. So a new law required large factories and professional guilds to care for employees’ financial needs when they were too sick to work—with an emphasis on lost wages rather than hospital bills. After the law, German workers became less likely to shrug off ailments. They called in sick at double the previous rate. And their illnesses lasted longer.

You don’t favor a free-market model that throws all the costs to society. You also don’t favor forcing consumers to choose only what they can afford to pay for. The debt I’m talking about is in part the debt incurred by society when people demand more health care than they need or seek out care that is not worth the associated cost. I’m also concerned about personal debt for people with high out-of-pocket expenses. In 2006, 10 percent of American workers had plans that carried deductibles of $1,000 or more; ten years later, it was more than 50 percent. Much of this move toward high-deductible plans came from employers: As employers sought to reduce the cost of employee benefits, out-of-pocket rates soared.

Q&A

You open the book with a story that illustrates the importance of physicianpatient conversations around costs.

convenience was bankrupting his patient.

A thirty-nine-year-old guy receives chemotherapy to shrink a tumor. When they get him to surgery, they find the cancer has spread from his colon to his liver. His Duke oncologist says, “Why don’t we put you back on the chemotherapy that shrank the original tumor?” At which point the patient says, “I can’t do that. I went bankrupt paying from the first round.” Intravenous therapy rather than a pill would have cost the patient next to nothing. The oncologist thought it would be more convenient for the patient to take a pill. He didn’t realize such

Don’t incentives sometimes play out in just the wrong way in health care? There are some things that are really expensive and are life-altering. Why should you be unable to afford that? If some treatment or medication is priced high but brings a lot of benefits, that should be affordable for the patient. If it’s priced high and brings almost no benefits, I’d like to see the patient pay for most of that.

How do your fellow physicians feel about the health-care system in its current form? We have record-high levels of burnout among physicians; in some specialties, the majority of physicians report being burned out. Some of these reimbursement models force them to spend more time tracking every decision than listening to their patients. Or they feel compelled to prescribe overly expensive

medicines, because that’s how their clinic pays its bills. Most of us enter the medical profession to interact with people at some of the most meaningful moments. Those meaningful moments can’t be reduced to a twelve-minute office visit. —Robert J. Bliwise, Photography by Les Todd

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

BookClub WE ASKED

Laura Huang B.S.E. ’00, M.S. ’01, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and author of Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage, about why she believes you can flip stereotypes and obstacles in your favor. When we trust and we understand how to hone our own You can take two different people who work equally hard gut feel, we become much better at going into a situation and and one will be more successful than the other. I would nev- being able to understand how others see us so that we can er say that hard work’s not critical. It is critical. But hard then flip those negative stereotypes in our favor and guide work alone is not enough. A lot of times hard work leaves us how they see us. There are some contexts in which we do want frustrated, and that’s because [the obstacles are] signals, and to be analytical. But there are other contexts when we want to perceptions, and stereotypes of others. That’s what I found in be less analytical and rely much more on the soft kind of data organizations and start-ups—that there are so many biases, out there. Knowing the difference is also a part of this process. and disadvantages, and constraints that people face. On her new research interests: And so, about three years ago, I got sort of I am really, really trying to think through the frustrated because all I was seeing were these fact that we’ve been talking about these isdisadvantages that women and people of When we’re in a sues for a long time, and in some ways, we’ve color and just everyone were facing because made progress. But in other ways, we’ve takof these signals and perceptions and cues. position where en ten steps backwards. It can’t just be the That’s when I started studying how peowe don’t have structural things. And so, how else can we ple can empower themselves. People need to privilege, we can understand this? The other component is empower themselves, even when the systems make our own that, as we become much more aware of diare maybe not changing quickly enough, or versity and inclusion and advantage and disnot changing at all, or not changing in the privilege. advantage, what things are getting hidden? way we think they should. Some of my research, for example, on The book is really about how we can flip accents—we know we can’t discriminate stereotypes and obstacles in our favor so that against people with accents. When we’re rating peowe can find and create our own edge, especially ple, we take that into account, but then we have when some people seemingly always have the adhidden things that are associated with people vantages and some people seem to have privilege. with accents. We all agree we’re not going to When we’re in a position where we don’t have discriminate against somebody with this accent, privilege, we can make our own privilege. but then we say, “Okay, can we all agree that we On trusting your intuition: want to hire somebody who thinks outside The gut-feel piece of it is that a lot of times the box, and someone who’s innovative, and we have this connotation around gut feel interpersonally influential?” And everyone as being something that’s emotional and says, “Yeah, yeah, of course.” And then it quick and subconscious and biased in a just so happens that all of the people who lot of ways, that we then need to go and are rated the lowest on thinking out of the find data to back it up. When we recbox and innovative and interpersonally ognize that, a lot of times, our gut ininfluential are people with an accent. Those are the types of things that I stinct and our intuition [are] based on want to continue trying to shed light on something that’s very cognitive, as well as so that we can actually truly start to see emotional—it’s based on our experiences progress. n and our beliefs and pattern matching, and lots of things that go into it, in addition to This interview has been edited and condensed. our emotions. On how her research reconsiders hard work:

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Courtesy Laura Huang

BY DUKE ALUMNI & FACULTY Courtesy Lori Duff

RECOMMENDATIONS from Lori B. Duff ’91

Duff calls herself “Atlanta’s funniest lawyer,” and in If You Did What I Asked in the First Place (Deeds Publishing), she finds the humor in everything from motherhood, to planning her own funeral, to the lack of pockets in women’s clothing. Below, she shares the books that inspired her foray into humor writing.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is the perfect example of how you can be hilariously funny and have quite a lot to say all at the same time. Grand thoughts about the nature of good and evil can also make you giggle. The basic premise—What if the Anti-Christ were accidentally switched at birth and raised by a “normal” family?—is so clever and thought-provoking and scandalous.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh was the first book I loved enough to read the cover off of it. It taught me that the best stories are learned through eavesdropping and told from a distance, and the best friends are the ones that are slightly off-center. It creates a world populated by real, imperfect characters who each break your heart in their own ways.

Naked by David Sedaris showed me that making one’s self the butt of the jokes can move beyond simple jokes and selfish navelgazing. Looking in the mirror, you reflect not just yourself but also what’s in the world behind you. Structurally, the short-story-with-recurringreal-characters format is a clear influence.

Finally, I remember Erma Bombeck’s If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? at my grandmother’s house and reading it over and over while the adults droned on. Her writing is sneakily subversive and timeless. She showed that you don’t have to have plot twists or glamour to be meaningful: There is wonder and humor in the everyday, if you look properly.

Lithium: A Doctor, A Drug, and a Breakthrough (Liveright) Walter A. Brown M.D. ’67 Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup (Rowman & Littlefield) Beau Dure ’00 The American Story (Simon & Schuster) David M. Rubenstein ’70 They Stole Him Out of Jail: Willie Earle, South Carolina’s Last Lynching Victim (The University of South Carolina Press) William B. Gravely Ph.D. ’69 I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) Chanequa Walker-Barnes M.Div. ’07 Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press) Philip M. Napoli, James R. Shepley Professor of public policy How “Indians” Think: Colonial Indigenous Intellectuals and the Question of Critical Race Theory (The University of Arizona Press) Gonzalo Lamana A.M. ’04, Ph.D. ’05 Dune Tracks (poems) (Fithian Press) Francis Fike ’54 Sea Level Rise: A Slow Tsunami on America’s Shores (Duke University Press) Orrin H. Pilkey, James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of geology, and Keith C. Pilkey Passing Fancies in Jewish American Literature and Culture (Indiana University Press) Judith Ruderman Ph.D. ’76, retired vice provost and adjunct professor of English

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

B CHOICE LD How goin g big , $60 led c 0 mil onso lion i rtium n gra instit of re nts, a searc ution Duke hers s, an d fift strat f rom egies een y forty ears -thre in th of wo e que e rk ha st to ve le deve d to n lop a n AID ew S vac cine.

BY BARRY YEOMAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX BOERNER

W STRATEGY: Haynes listens to progress reports at a lab presentation meeting.

HEN A DUKE-LED RESEARCH TEAM WON a $300

million federal grant to help develop an AIDS vaccine in 2005, the global situation was looking grim. Even as the epidemic largely disappeared from American newspapers, the number of people living with HIV, the AIDS virus, had climbed above 40 million for the first time. Sub-Saharan Africa was hit hardest: In Swaziland, a pregnant woman visiting a prenatal clinic had a four-in-ten chance of testing positive. But the disease was hammering vulnerable populations worldwide: unemployed Russians shooting heroin with dirty needles; Thai teens having unprotected hookups; Indonesian sex workers who feared getting arrested if police caught them with condoms. In the United States it was hitting young black gay and bisexual men, many of whom didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know they were infected. Anti-viral medications kept many healthy. But the drugs were not universally available. And some officials were working at cross-purposes to the public health. South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health minister was urging patients not to take the medicines, which she called toxic, but instead to eat a diet of beets, sweet potatoes, and lemon skin. Uganda had curtailed the distribution of free condoms. And the U.S. government was pouring money into overseas abstinence programs that had little or no effect.

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

In 2005 alone, the United Nations and World Health Organization tallied 3 million AIDS deaths, including 570,000 children under fifteen. The two bodies jointly called for “great urgency” in wrangling the epidemic. “A vaccine to overcome HIV,” they declared, “is our most compelling hope.”

hat summer, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) cranked up its efforts to develop a vaccine. The agency, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced the winner of that seven-year, $300 million competitive grant: a single consortium of vaccine researchers from what would eventually become forty-three institutions. They would work together under a virtual called the Cenwho is leading a very umbrella ter for HIV/AIDS Vaccine impressive group of people. Immunology. Heading the would be physician If we’re going to get a center Barton Haynes, director of vaccine for HIV, it almost the Duke Human Vaccine (DHVI) at the certainly is going to be all or Institute Duke University School in part by this group.” of Medicine. The colossal award was a departure from the traditional system INSPIRATION: Clockwise, of giving smaller grants to individual intop inset, on Haynes’ vestigators. “It’s big science in the way shelf are a signed that the Human Genome Project was,” photo of NIAID director Peggy Johnston, NIAID’s top AIDS-vacAnthony Fauci and 3D cine official, said at the time. Haynes and models of the vaccine; some of his colleagues had argued that excerpt from Haynes' the old system wasn’t working: HIV is journal; the empty such a vexing virus, defying all the usual pharmacy in Zambia; methods of vaccine development, that a the current DHVI team breakthrough required a whole new apgathered on campus; proach and a focused, big-dollar effort. It Haynes with Sten needed a critical mass of scientists from Vermund, who organized different disciplines, striving togethhis initial trip to Africa; er toward a unified goal. They, in turn, Zambia’s University needed expensive infrastructure and Teaching Hospital enough flexibility to shift money around

“You’re dealing with a superstar

30 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

as their needs changed. They also needed the ability to share their data seamlessly, without the usual turf wars that hinder scientific cooperation. This was not a consensus view. Even before the Duke-led consortium won the grant, others were disparaging the big-science approach. “When you don’t know how to solve a problem, putting all the resources in the hands of a very small number of people—even very capable people—is not the way to do it,” Michael Lederman, a professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University, told the journal Nature Medicine. That was fifteen years ago. Since then, Haynes’ team has won two more large NIAID grants: a total of $639 million distributed over twenty-one years ending in 2026. They have also received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That and other money has allowed them to build a turnkey operation, capable of not just doing basic research but also manufacturing vaccine components and conducting clinical trials. Haynes has also built something that’s harder to visualize but equally essential: a worldwide, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists who cooperate as if they all belong to the same lab. “That structure is critical if what we want to achieve is the ability to take what we learn in a laboratory, and what we learn from testing clinical samples, and turn that into an idea that can be tested as a vaccine,” says John Mascola, director of NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center. “It is very difficult to build that capability from start to finish. So Duke is a fairly unique example of an academic center, especially in vaccinology, that is able to do this.” The international group has spent almost fifteen years probing HIV to give up its secrets. They have learned what makes it such a hardy organism, impervious to the virus-fighting proteins called antibodies. And they’ve developed new strategies to outwit the virus. They now believe, as do others outside the consortium, that a vaccine could be within the imaginable future. It won’t eradicate HIV

“HIV seems to always be one step ahead.

a week, and it’s not because he’s afraid something will fall between the cracks. He is genuinely invested in solving the problem.” Raised in a small Tennessee town, Haynes describes his early life as a series of fortunate handoffs from one mentor to the next. He graduated from medical school in 1973, interned at Duke, and then started his research career at the NIH. He soon landed in Fauci’s lab doing basic immunology research. “He was showing signs at the earliest stage—the first two, three years of his career—of being someone who clearly was going to be a star,” Fauci says. “He’s intellectually brilliant. He’s very analytical. He’s extremely careful in his planning and his interpretation of the data.” Haynes returned to Duke in 1980, this time as an associate professor. (He is now the Frederic M. Hanes Professor of medicine.) It was an important era for those studying the immune system. The following year, the government reported that previously healthy gay men were coming down with two rare and aggressive diseases: Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and a cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma. Haynes’ professional interests made him a logical candidate to study this cluster of illnesses, which would eventu-

It always wins.”

TEAM WORK: Above, DHVI director of research Saunders, DHVI associate director of research Wiehe, and Haynes hold their weekly meeting; a grant financing and planning discussion; chatting with researcher Priyamvada Acharya

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altogether, they say. But it could significantly slow transmission. “I still think it’s going to be a formidable challenge,” says Anthony Fauci, one of the world’s leading AIDS researchers and director of NIAID. “But I think, within a reasonable period of time, we’ll get an HIV vaccine that is 50, 60 percent effective, enough to have a major impact on the kinetics of the epidemic.” Fauci, who mentored Haynes before the epidemic began, predicts the Duke physician and his consortium will ultimately deserve credit. “You’re dealing with a superstar who is leading a very impressive group of people,” he says. “If we’re going to get a vaccine for HIV, it almost certainly is going to be all or in part by this group.”

arton Haynes is a bearded, jeans-wearing seventy-twoyear-old who is famous among peers for his tirelessness. “He doesn’t need any sleep,” says Kelly Soderberg, DHVI’s chief of staff. “He will be here seven days

ally be identified as AIDS. In 1982, he received a call from Robert Gallo, a scientist at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute. “This is going to be the greatest pandemic in the history of humanity,” Haynes remembers Gallo saying. (Gallo, who went on to establish HIV as the cause of AIDS, recalls the conversation.) Haynes agreed to help out. He and Dani Bolognesi, now a professor emeritus of surgery at Duke, joined a task force that Gallo convened. At home, Haynes joined with the University of North Carolina’s Hemophilia Center to study AIDS patients who had gotten infected after being treated with a clotting protein made from human blood. Once HIV emerged as the culprit behind AIDS, Haynes and Bolognesi began working on a vaccine. “We all thought in 1984, after the virus was confirmed, that it was going to be just like Hepatitis B and other vaccines,” Haynes says—that is, a relatively straightforward endeavor. They would take the part of the HIV virus that protective antibodies target, manufacture a test-tube version of it, and inject it first into non-human primates and then into people. This would trigger the body to produce its own antibodies, ready to fight the real virus if it came along. “And we’d be done in two years,” he says. Over two decades, the field tried numerous approaches. “None of the strate-

gies worked,” Haynes says. “A lot of dead ends.” HIV, it turns out, has developed myriad ways to fool our bodies. For one, it mutates like crazy, and our antibodies can’t keep pace. “It’s one of the universe’s best escape artists,” says Kevin Wiehe, an assistant professor in medicine and DHVI’s associate director of research. The immune system evolves quickly, too, in an attempt to overcome the virus. But “HIV seems to always be one step ahead,” Wiehe says. “It always wins.” What’s more, as Haynes discovered, HIV has evolved to mimic its host—to appear “more human,” says Wiehe. “The immune system is set up not to attack itself, so it’s a very clever way for the virus to evade the immune system.” Another evolutionary masterstroke: HIV infects the very cells that are designed to kill it. “As your immune system is making more cells to fight against it, it actually is creating more targets for infection,” says Kevin Saunders Ph.D. ’10, an assistant professor in surgery and DHVI’s director of research. The infected immune cells then die off, making it harder for the body to fight the virus long term. The die-off also impairs the body more generally, which is why people with AIDS sometimes develop fatal diseases like Pneumocystis, which don’t harm uninfected people.

Little surprise, then, that the early years proved disappointing. Haynes might have moved onto other professional pursuits if not for an overseas trip that reinforced his priorities.

y 2001, Haynes was chairing Duke’s department of medicine and wondering if he should shift his career toward administration. He was also running DHVI, which he and Bolognesi had cofounded and which at the time had just a few employees. Some of Haynes’ HIV-research colleagues were working in Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa where one-fifth of the adult population was infected. Haynes wanted to set up collaborations there, so he joined a University of Alabama epidemiologist on a visit. It was his first time in a developing country, and it drove home the human toll of the epidemic. Haynes visited an orphanage that housed some of the world’s second-largest population of AIDS orphans. He talked to community leaders who were trying to build schools for those children. At University Teaching Hospital, he tailed physicians as they made rounds. “We were seeing bed after bed of AIDS DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

patients for whom the only treatment was pain control,” he recalls. “And then going to the pharmacy—I have pictures of the empty pharmacy cabinets.” He listened as doctors described the hope they placed in vaccine research. And he kept a journal. “This trip will turn out to have been the most important six days of my professional life,” he wrote. “It has helped find the perspective I needed—

“We had to

STATE OF THE ART: Haynes looks into one of the five bays in the facility that enables DHVI research teams to manufacture new vaccines for use in "proof of concept" experimental medicine Phase I clinical trials.

learn as we were flying.”

helped me find my way during the last half of my professional life.” Haynes would not become an administrator after all. “I decided to go back to science,” he says, “and to work on this problem full time.” By then, it was clear that a vaccine was unlikely to come from the private sector. “The pharmaceutical companies had dropped out of it,” says Haynes’ longtime colleague Larry Corey, principal investigator at the HIV Vaccine Trials Network at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “Academia was the structure that needed to move into it.” Making inroads, Haynes believed, meant convincing the powers-that-be to fund a big-science effort. In 2003, he joined two dozen prominent AIDS researchers in penning a plea in the journal Science for the creation of large, coordinated centers that would produce a “systematic and coordinated pipeline” of vaccine candidates. “Tens of millions of lives are dependent on the development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine,” they wrote. The Science article set in motion a process that led to the large grant that NIAID awarded in 2005. Four consortia, including the Dukeled one, competed for the $300 million. Others grumbled about the grant. Nature Medicine sent a reporter to a bio34 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

medical conference in Banff, Canada, where she found that “researchers could talk about little else in between seminars, over drinks or at poster sessions.” Some argued that the world’s leading HIV scientists should be sharing the funds and focusing on different goals, rather than competing for an all-or-nothing award. “Why shoot yourself in the foot by disqualifying 75 percent of the best re-

searchers?” said Neal Nathanson, then associate dean of global health programs at the University of Pennsylvania. Nathanson has since retired and declined to comment for this story. Three other past critics, including Lederman, didn’t respond to interview requests.

DHVI’s scientists insist that scale matters: It frees researchers from scrambling to pay for equipment or personnel. “When you don’t have to worry about those logistics, but you worry about the science, that’s when you can make progress,” says Saunders. “The large grants have propelled the field forward at the speed of the intellectual process. It’s not the speed at which you’re waiting for a piece of equipment, or the speed at

which you’re waiting for enough money to do the in vivo studies.” What’s more, a large consortium means collaboration across disciplines. “The sheer amount of expertise that’s required cannot be really held in one person’s brain,” says Wiehe. “No one person, or even one lab, could figure all of this out. I can’t even imagine how you could do it without some sort of big-science approach.”

ach of the seven-year grants has funded a different phase of the research: figuring out what

makes HIV so hard to conquer; developing strategies to overcome those obstacles; and now, in the final phase, turning those strategies into vaccines and testing them in humans. Some of the consortium’s work began in Africa, where the epidemic remains most intense. Led by Myron Cohen, a physician at the University of North Carolina, researchers set up eight research sites at clinics in five countries. They screened 16,486 people, hoping to find some who had just gotten infected and not yet produced antibodies. They identified 312 newly infected individuals, each representing an opportunity to see how the body initially responds to HIV.

The blood serum of those 312, plus a similar number who had been infected for longer, produced a wealth of information. Researchers at the University of Alabama and Los Alamos National Lab made what Haynes calls an “astonishing” discovery: Even though an individual with HIV might have billions of variants of the virus in their body, when they infect a partner, it’s generally with a single virus particle. “That was the first bit of good news,” Haynes says. “We don’t have to protect against every variant that’s out there,” but rather the smaller set that infect others. Since then, scientists at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania have isolated and studied these viruses. One major goal of the Africa study was to identify those rare individuals whose bodies naturally made potent antibodies against HIV. Scientists call them “broadly neutralizing antibodies,” because they can stop many different strains of HIV from invading human cells. To find those individuals, David Montefiori, a professor of surgery at Duke, screened the serum of hundreds of African research subjects and classified them by the types of antibodies they produced. Scientists then studied the genetic changes that took place in those who made the powerful antibodies, and those who didn’t. “We performed a large series of studies and asked, ‘What’s going on when the good things happen, and what’s going on when they don’t happen?’ ” Haynes says. From there, the science unfolded in layers. When people do produce broadly neutralizing antibodies, it doesn’t happen immediately. Rather, it’s the product of a series of mutations: a years-long contest of genetic one-upmanship between the immune system and HIV. Haynes calls this “co-evolution” because the virus and antibodies evolve together, each reacting to the other’s changes. One of the African individuals, who was first tested a month after infection, eventually developed broadly neutralizing antibodies. (For privacy, their nationality and gender are kept confidenDUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

tial.) By tracking that person for more than three years, researchers from Duke, the National Institutes of Health, and elsewhere were able to map the series of genetic changes that both the virus and the antibodies underwent. They published their findings in Nature in 2013. “Bart pioneered the study of virus-antibody co-evolution,” says NIAID’s Mascola. Once Haynes and his team saw how HIV and antibodies took advantage of each other’s vulnerabilities, Mascola says, “he began to use the information from natural infection to design a vaccine that would teach the immune system to make potent antibodies to HIV.” That, ultimately, led to a groundbreaking paper, published last December in Science: Researchers from Duke, Harvard

terfere with the serendipity and individual initiative that often drive discovery. “We had to learn as we were flying,” says Tom Denny, a professor in medicine and DHVI’s chief operating officer. His colleagues circulated a funny video of a commercial airplane soaring through the sky, filled with passengers, as workers bolted its body together. Everyone was hyper-aware of the number of dollars at stake and the controversy surrounding the grant. “We had an incredible amount of visibility and accountability on us,” says Denny. “You had the NIH that gave money and wanted success. You had Duke that said, ‘Don’t mess it up.’ And then you had the science community saying, ‘You guys shouldn’t have this.’ So whichever

capacity. Denny and Haynes secured $5 million from the medical school’s thendean, Nancy Andrews, to build a sterile facility where vaccine components could be produced. “We had a lot of people saying, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve never made product before. You’re academic scientists,’” Denny recalls. So he hired an outside auditor to review planning and construction, and then hired a specialized search firm to find experienced professionals to staff the facility. According to Denny, the sterile facility has successfully made three products, possibly cheaper but certainly faster than private industry could have. It quickly proved too small. With federal and university funding, DHVI is now retrofitting its building to add four more manufac-

I’m very, very grateful.

“

I get up every day feeling how wonderful it is to have an opportunity to contribute.”

University, and elsewhere had coaxed the immune systems of mice and monkeys to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies. This is not the same as creating a fully working vaccine. But it overcomes a “major roadblock” by eliciting genetic changes in the antibodies that the body doesn’t want to make naturally, says Saunders, who (along with Wiehe) is one of four cofirst authors on the paper. To do this, the scientists relied, in part, on the genetic map from that same newly infected individual in Africa.

anaging a research program of this scale was a new experience for Duke. There was so much to figure out: how to hit the spending targets with precision, how to comply with all the rules, how to make sure big-science coordination didn’t in36 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

direction you turned, there was pressure to make sure you got everything right.” Some of the lessons came hard. Initially, DHVI contracted with private industry to manufacture the ingredients for clinical trials. “It was a disaster,” says Wiehe. “You think you’re going to get their A team working on your product. But you get the B team or the C team.” In one case, Denny recalls, DHVI hired a private company to make components for four vaccines. Six months later, the company came back and raised the price from $12 million to $25 million. “What do you do when you’re building a house, and you’ve got half the house built, and you builder says to you, ‘Well, if you want to put a roof on it, the price is going to double?’ ” Denny says. “You’re too deep in the hole at that point.” Something needed to change. DHVI needed its own in-house manufacturing

turing suites: restrict- COLLEAGUES: From left, ed-access rooms with RJ Edwards, modular walls, ports in Haynes, and the ceilings, and stainVictoria Stalls less-steel machines costing, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, Haynes had to build a different type of infrastructure: a network of researchers willing to set aside the competitiveness that often defines their cultures. “All of us were used to not talking about our research until it was published,” he says. “It took a bit to make the transition.” The scientists had to learn to share information across the organization without worrying their ideas would be stolen. Haynes had all the investigators sign confidentiality agreements. From the beginning, he modeled the culture he wanted by talking freely about his own lab’s day-to-day accomplishments. It

took a year, he says, until his colleagues felt comfortable doing the same. To this day, Haynes reinforces this spirit of collaboration at every large consortium meeting. “Welcome,” he says. “This is a big lab meeting. If you hear anything that’s of interest, go to the person from

whom you found it and collaborate. You cannot take it and run with it.” This is high-touch science. Data don’t just get handed off in written form; people sit down together and talk. Matt Johnson, a former drug-company researcher, now leads the manufacturing effort as DHVI’s senior director of product development. Every Wednesday morning, he and some of his managers attend laboratory meetings with Haynes and Saunders and look at their results. “If you were to go to a lot of pharmaceutical industry partners or other research environments, you would not see that connection of teams physi-

cally sitting together and looking at data,” he says. “We can provide them real-time feedback, and they can also ask us questions: ‘Hey, is this a feasible approach? Do you see any concerns as we take this toward a human trial?’ That cross-pollination is incredibly strong.”

f there’s any chance of forgetting what’s at stake in the quest for an HIV vaccine, that memory is reignited when you enter the Duke Human Vaccine Institute’s headquarters. Hanging inside the atrium is a colorful panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt, with individual rectangles recalling people who died in the 1990s. They include ten Duke pediatrics patients, one just three months old. “There has never been an epidemic that has sustained the death rate that HIV has had, not in history,” says Larry Corey of the HIV Vaccine Trials Net-

work. “Our generation of scientists is going to be defined by how we handle the epidemic.” For Haynes, the imperative is amplified by a personal sense of his own good fortune. His life could have turned out differently: He grew up in the rural South during the Vietnam War and recalls his draft number was low. Haynes’ Selective Service classification was 1-A, he says, which means he was eligible to be drafted and sent into battle. He thinks about that still. And he thinks about that chain of mentors who guided him from high school to the start of his career, even when he floundered. “But for grace of any one of those individuals, I could have easily never made it in my path,” he says. “And I know that. So I’m very, very grateful. I get up every day feeling how wonderful it is to have an opportunity to contribute.” An HIV vaccine would crown Haynes’ career, but that’s not his intended end point. Haynes has been working to parlay his organization’s team-building and research skills, not to mention its state-of-the-art infrastructure, into large new grants. Last fall, DHVI received $28 million from NIAID to house a quality-assurance program for laboratories that do HIV research. It also won three NIAID contracts that, if fully funded, will total $400 million over seven years. Those awards will fund yet another multi-institutional effort—this time to develop a universal flu vaccine. n Yeoman teaches journalism and public policy at Duke’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

All the time S T U D E N T S TA K E D I F F E R E N T A P P R O A C H E S T O T H E

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in the world UNSTRUCTURED CHALLENGE OF THE READING PERIOD.

BY SCOTT HULER ILLUSTRATION BY NORMAN BENDELL

he Carpenter Reading Room on the third floor of Bostock Library is an “absolute silence area” during even slow times of the se-

mester. An overloud cough can generate a stare, an unmuted phone chime, defenestration—for at least the phone. But during reading period in mid-December, the Carpenter atmosphere is so thick you can barely breathe. Anxiety hangs in the air like mist. Every table is full, as are most of the armchairs, usually in pairs, students stretched across. Every place at every table the same: computer, phone, piles of notes, pens, highlighters, at least one carryout cup of coffee. Photocopied sheets with highlighted lines in binders, spreadsheets on screens, maybe even a few actual books. And the students move from one to the next: screen, notes, book, phone, printout. Type. Read. Check. Type some more. Reading week. Well, technically it’s not a week, though “reading week” rolls off the lips more smoothly than “reading period.” According to Duke archivists, it’s a period that has accordioned in length over recent decades, anywhere from a day to a few days, usually including a weekend. But the sense remains the same: a few days when classes have ended and finals haven’t yet begun. (For undergrads; graduate reading period is

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

longer, usually that full week.) A yawning period of nothing scheduled. The library is open twenty-four hours, food is on offer constantly, and all you have to do is study. Or.

No s studenleeping awake ts were prepa ned in the r this reation of port.

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“You know,” says dean of students Sue Wasiolek ’76, M.H.A. ’78, LL.M. ’93, “I was a freshman in 1973, and I vividly remember the reading period. It was a time that my roommate and I baked cakes.” Cakes. “We would just have sort of this ongoing study break, where we would…we baked probably twelve, fifteen cakes, and we would decorate them and deliver them to our friends,” continues Wasiolek, familiarly known as Dean Sue. So, okay. Maybe there’s another side to this reading period. “My experience as a student and also as faculty in residence is that it’s also a time for students to take a deep breath,” says Wasiolek. To that end, Duke Athletics puts on a “Paws for Exams” programs,

“My experience as a student and also as faculty in residence is that it’s also a time for students to take a deep breath.”

bringing dogs to the K Center classroom for athletes to pet, which studies show lowers blood pressure and reduces muscle tension. The East Campus Marketplace offers “Tea-laxation” (free tea and relaxation); special sponsored study halls appear at places like the Nasher Museum; and various libraries, dorms, and other entities offer cookie breaks. The “Midnight Breakfast” at the Marketplace starts at 11 p.m. and has lines that stretch across the quad (this year it even ran out of T-shirts). DuWell, which

takes an integrative approach to student health, sponsors coloring and meditation. Miniature therapy horses, which are actually a thing, visited Lilly Library in a “Stampede of Love,” and Wasiolek had a study break with dogs at her G-A apartment. But even the breaks can raise stress, according to Alicia Santana, an East Campus residence coordinator. “They talk a lot about mixed messages,” she says. “The library is open twenty-four hours, but there are multiple study breaks.” Students seem to be asking, wait: am I supposed to be studying or breaking? Both, of course, and the students have opinions. Santana informally polled her resident assistants and students about reading period and found “for the most part they said students used Saturday and Sunday to just procrastinate, but then Monday and Tuesday they were stressed.” Overall, though, students respond as you’d expect Duke students to respond: “They’re just trying to have the right answer. Unfortunately, there is no right answer. You have to learn to time-manage.” So we took strolls through campus during reading period to see this time management in action.

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Perkins, Third Floor

eaning over the wall of a carrel at which a friend is working on a computer on a desktop overspread with data sheets and printouts, senior computer science major Riley Cohen stands, stretches, and carries his paper cup of coffee with a plastic lid over to his own carrel. He’s a little wired: “I had a project due at 3 a.m.,” he says, smiling. “All the projects are due at 3 a.m.” in his computer classes, which at least keeps them from conflicting with other deadlines. Like for the project he’s working on, building an app that will filter songs according to more than just artist or genre but things like tempo. As for the intensity of reading period: “It really varies year by year,” he says. “At the beginning of my time at Duke, I found work was less project-based, so reading week was sort of a crunch.” With four finals staring down at him, tension rose and stayed high. Now with a more project-based curriculum, each term “the hardest part of those projects is to find time when everyone is free and no one has class.” With the predictable result: “Ultimately, you end up putting it off and saying, ‘We’ll figure it out during reading week.’ ” Which they then actually do. “It’s nice to be able to work uninterrupted: no classes, no little assignments due. You can just work uninterrupted.” Reading week has a clear end, after which everything is done for the term. “Whereas during the year, you finish one and you know another one is coming right at you. It’s a good feeling to work through it, and you have that clear goal in mind.” He estimates he’s sleeping seven hours a night and eating two meals a day. But the open area around the bridge between Perkins and Bostock is filled with people working on projects like his; the carrels and tables seem to embrace the printouts of comp sci classes. Even better, he tends to be working on projects with his friends.

“I have some friends who have turned completely nocturnal.” S C E N E

t 8 p.m. the doors to the room off the entrance to Lilly Library open and a crowd of East Campus studiers pours in. They scavenge table after table stacked with cookies, chips, crackers, pretzels, candy. And fruit and veggies and dip, too, but… you know. Cookies and candy, much of it home-baked by the librarians and local members of the Duke Campus Club, which organized the study break. The initial swarm returns to its studies, but periodically a new burst populates the room. “They sit down at their table, and someone says, ‘Where’d you get that?’ ” says librarian Lee Sorensen. “So they come in waves.” He describes his work with students during reading period as “library triage: things they should have been doing all semester they suddenly need.” He can help them figure out which of their information needs are solvable, and how to sort through priorities, always gently. “I’ve never in my career told a student they should have started sooner.” On the other

Lilly, Second Floor hand, students, especially on East Campus, where freshmen live, are occasionally simply overwhelmed. “I’ve had people come up and say, ‘You have a student down there crying.’ ” Well, there are cookies and veggie dip. Will that help? On the second floor, the Thomas Room is full, and students occupy every desk, chair, and table in the lounges and interstitial spaces throughout the library. At one table overlooking the information desk, Brian Anaya, a freshman premed, and Ying Yu, a freshman with a neuroscience interest, pick at their plates of cookies and think about reading period. “I’ve been here since 11 this morning,” Anaya says. “We took a break for about thirty minutes,” says Yu. “Just for cookies.” This is reading period, and these guys are for it. “I like it a lot,” Yu says. “I know a lot of our friends say they feel antsy—because they know they should be doing something, but they’re not sure what. But I’m antsy when I don’t study. So making Lilly

home for a day seemed like a good thing.” Anaya agrees. “I don’t feel like I’d be able to study enough for finals without reading period. I honestly don’t think I could.” As for the unstructured time, “I wouldn’t say it’s cool, but it’s nice having a break. I feel, like, in high school I was more stressed about finals than I am now. I have so much more time to study, to be able to do anything. I’m doing a project I was supposed to be doing all semester. I feel like I’ve never been as productive as I’ve been today.” Fear is a great motivator. Yu, on the other hand, is not only not catching up on a semester-full of missed work; she’s not even behind on her reading-period schedule. Which, yes, she has. “I have chem Thursday, neuro Friday, math Monday. So…” she blushes a bit, “I made a study plan.” She shows it off: calendar pages with each class given a particular color (math is blue; chem, yellow), and reading, problem, and study goals for each day. DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

“We took a break for about thirty minutes. Just for cookies.”

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Divinity School, stairs

here the stairwell between the first and second floors makes a 180-degree turn, junior biomedical engineer Simal Soydan and her friend Angie Lei (also a junior, and an electrical and computer engineering major) sit on the steps and gobble a quick dinner out of takeout containers. It’s midafternoon, so it’s kind of an odd time for…lunch? Dinner? Something? “Yeah,” Soydan says, laughing. “Because we stayed up very late, and we can’t wake up early, so breakfast and lunch then shift.” No papers for these students: It’s four finals, so it’s nose in the book and no mistake during reading period. “I have four finals, and three of them are STEM,” she says. “They’re all cumulative, so I have to study each one all the way from the beginning.” “Reading period changes for Trinity versus Pratt,” she says. Trinity students have papers and take-home exams, so they’re the ones watching movies and strolling the grounds as they think through their papers. Pratt students, especially in the early years, are grinding through practice problem sets. “I would prefer to have a paper and two finals rather than four. There is not enough time to study, definitely.

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We wish we had one more day” of reading period. They barely feel like they have time enough for everything. “That’s why we have our lunch way close to our study space” in the York Chapel in the divinity school. “Perkins is too crowded, and it’s hard to find a place.” What about just studying at home? They live right next to each other in the Hollows, the new West Campus dorms. “Math is a class we take together,” Soydan says. “We teach each other and talk, so we stay home.” Though that’s a mixed blessing. “We get too comfortable, and we stop working,” Soydan says, at which point “it’s better to come to the library. You get infected by the environment, and it kind of pushes you.” Lei has something of a seen-it-all cast to her face. No romance left in reading week? “That might have been freshman year, when you glorify studying,” she says. “Because you were at a new school where everyone was so smart, and your best was no longer the best. “But now, as an upperclassman, you just want to be through with it.”

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Divinity School Library, bottom floor

In front of Rubenstein Library gallery space

he student hunkered down so jealously guarded his secret study place that he preferred to remain anonymous, so we will call him Sanders. This degree of protection indicates that the bottom floor of the divinity library, with its concrete floor, single row, along one wall, of carrels with industrial steel shelves, a barely padded office chair, and harsh fluorescent lighting must have some kind of special study qualities. The divinity library is itself something of a maze, with stairways you cannot find connecting rooms at levels you did not know existed filled with books in languages you do not speak. The entire experience feels like something out of an M.C. Escher drawing, so merely finding the bottom floor clears out a lot of potential study-space competitors. “I discovered it last year,” says the senior policy major, as he studies for

a neuroscience exam, “so it took some time.” Even the bookshelves require you to flick on light switches if you wish to peruse a stack, so a little carrel along the wall can feel like a ship at night on a silent, empty sea. The basement’s general lack of comfort recommends it, he says. “I think that’s a deterrent for a lot of people. A lot of my friends don’t like to come here for that reason.” His own study practice “varies from semester to semester,” he says. “It seems to depend on the number of finals.” If he’s got a bunch of finals, “near the end it can be stressful.” If he’s had mostly essays that term, “it can be one of the most free times,” and he can be like Dean Sue, taking walks, breathing, baking cakes. “Then this is a period to decompress.” Not now, though. He turns back to his neuroscience.

S C E N E

ophomore Shannon Smith, a mechanical engineering major, serves on the Honor Council and sits at a table full of tumblers, which council members are distributing to students as encouragement to stay hydrated. “Fill up for Finals,” signs say, and students seem to appreciate the cup. They need it, Smith says: “It’s right before their high-stress exams.” She doesn’t feel like she’s exaggerating. “In my experience, it’s been kind of a complete destruction of routine,” she says of reading period. “All of your rhythms are thrown.” Though not in a bad way. “Every single week you’re trying to get on top of the next week’s things,” and then suddenly you only have one last set of things to do, and a kind of relaxation sets in as you prepare. “It’s more recovery from the semester than preparation for finals.” Sitting with Smith, Evan Liu, a sophomore probably majoring in biology, feels similarly. As a premed he’s got a couple of finals, a final paper, and one final project already done, so “honestly, it’s been pretty chill the last couple days.” He says he’s had a disciplined semester, and he doesn’t need to stretch on his finals to get the grades he needs, so he’s seeing more friends, attending breaks like the midnight breakfast, enjoying himself. “I’m getting more rest,” he says. Smith chimes back in. “So much sleep,” she says. “At least ten hours” a night. “It’s ridiculous.” She’s not necessarily typical, though. “I have some friends who have turned completely nocturnal.”

Dean Sue’s Evening With Dogs

nto the mix of students wedging their way into and out of Dean Sue’s apartment in Gilbert-Addoms, a dog makes its way. “Oh my goodness, another one!” a voice shouts. “Hi! What are their names?” A student dressed as a Christmas tree beams. It’s Canine Friends night here on the last night of reading period, and the place is mobbed: five dogs and what looks to be about 6,000 students, though estimating a few dozen crammed into the apartment at any one time you’d have a handle on it. Students pocket packets of fruit snacks and Sun Chips, gather armfuls of cookies and brownies from Tupperware containers. Sophomore Sarah Kate Baudhuin has rather a longer-termish look about her, and she explains. “Last year I spent pretty much all reading period here watching Hallmark movies with [Dean Sue],” she says. “We’d have tea, and she’s the brownie master.” She has fewer exams than papers, she says, “so I would hang around here and write. Do a portion, and then watch a movie.” With her schedule driven by writing rather than by relearning subjects for cumulative exams, “I’ve been enjoying it. Just having this buffer period—just seeing campus in a more relaxed way.” This reading period is perfectly organized, she says: “I have four papers and one exam, and they’re due at staggered times.” She takes long walks, enjoys the feeling of campus. “During the busy-ness of regular semester, I don’t have the time to do that. [Now] I have time to explore, eat at new places.” She’s at Dean Sue’s not for the dogs, though, or for any ancillary benefit the dogs might bring. “Dean Sue is a big enough draw,” she says. “I’m more of a cat person, myself.” n DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

ForeverDukeNEWSMAKERS

go.duke.com

Christine Schindler ’15 and Dutch Waanders ’15 are featured in Time’s Best Inventions of 2019 list for their innovative technology PathSpot, a technical solution to foodborne illness.

Deanna Okun J.D. ’90 was selected as managing partner of Adduci, Mastriani & Schaumberg LLP, the first change in leadership since the law firm’s founding in 1981.

Deirdre Stanley ’86 was appointed executive vice president and general counsel of Estee Lauder.

Courtesy Denise Schrier Cetta

Courtesy Jonas Blank

Denise Schrier Cetta ’90, right, a producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, was a recipient of an Emmy for The Legacy of Lynching, a documentary featuring Oprah Winfrey.

Jonas Blank ’01 was promoted to senior vice president of business and legal affairs for NBC Universal Content Distribution.

Duke Athletics

Courtesy Deanna Okun

Elizabeth Coffman ’87 won the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film for her documentary Flannery, about American novelist and essayist Flannery O’Connor.

Yunghi Kim

Courtesy Flannery

Wanisha Smith ’08 joined Duke Women’s Basketball as an assistant coach.

Daniel Jones ’18 was named starting quarterback for the New York Giants.

The Chronicle 44 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Tracey Lesetar-Smith ’02 was named senior vice president, general counsel of NASCAR.

Courtesy McDowell

Courtesy Lesetar-Smith

Shane Battier ’01 was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.

Valecia McDowell ’95, J.D. ’98 was named to the inaugural Lawyers of Color “Nation’s Best” list, which recognizes minority law firm partners and seniorlevel corporate counsel.

7Have news to share about your achievements

and milestones? Submit a class note and read your classmates’ latest news by logging into alumni.duke.edu.

Chris Hildreth

Sterly Wilder ’83, associate vice president for alumni affairs, traveled to England, and remembers...

Royal Air Force

My recent visit to the ROYAL AIR FORCE CLUB in London was about a different kind of service. I was there with alumni and guests to hear from three of Duke’s current alumni Rhodes Scholars—Jay Ruckelshaus ’16, Kushal Kadakia ’19, and Clair Wang ’19. Did you know Duke recently had its fiftieth Rhodes Scholar named? To my delight, they were in conversation with Elizabeth Kiss. I’ve known Elizabeth for years; she’s the founding director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and served on the university’s board of trustees for a dozen years. Now, she’s the CEO and warden of Rhodes House, the gathering place for the scholars on Oxford University’s campus. Elizabeth led a fascinating discussion with the Duke scholars, first delving into the complicated history of the Rhodes and then giving an overview of the program now. The three scholars all have fascinating stories in very different disciplines, and Elizabeth’s interviewing skills highlighted each of their journeys. It was wonderful! I left feeling, if not quite like a scholar, definitely a lot wiser. n

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

ForeverDukePROFILE

MR. NICE GUY As the president and CEO of Fred Rogers Productions, Paul Siefken has upheld and helped to burnish a lofty legacy.

PAUL SIEFKEN ’92 was terrified of the big shoes he would have to fill. Not the size nine, dusty blue sneakers that Mister Rogers always put on as he sang “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Something even bigger than that— Fred Rogers’ legacy. It was 2012, and Siefken, director of children’s programming at PBS, had just received a job offer from Fred Rogers Productions to head its production for a time and go on to be its next president and CEO.

BY CRISTINA ROUVALIS PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARTHA RIAL

Working in the name of Fred Rogers—songwriter/pupBut when Siefken tells people where he works, Pittsburpeteer/scriptwriter/scholar/beloved TV legend/very nice ghers start telling stories about meeting Rogers—in an elevaman—seemed daunting. Not only did Rogers change chiltor or maybe on the street—and how he was able to connect dren’s television by playing pretend to help preschoolers with them. “There’s a statue outside of Heinz Field [home through their very real emotions—he was every bit as kind of the Pittsburgh Steelers], and it’s not of Franco Harris,” and genuine off screen. (If niceness were rated on a scale, Siefken says, referring to a Steelers legend. there might be nice, really nice, and then Mister Rogers Lately, he’s been hearing even more Rogers stories than nice.) How could anyone possibly live up to that? usual, with the fiftieth anniversary of Mister Rogers’ NeighAt PBS Kids, Siefken had helped with the development borhood, a 2018 celebration that began with the documenof Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, an animated show and the tary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and included the best-selling first spinoff from the neighborhood. But accepting the offer biography The Good Neighbor. The year crescendoed with would mean having Fred Rogers on his business card and prodozens of articles and columns and magazine covers with the ducing new shows in the name of an American icon. kind face of everyone’s favorite television neighbor staring He called Lisa Henson, daughter of Jim, of Muppets fame, out. Now the Mister Rogers lovefest has spilled over into a who had worked with Siefken on Sid the Science Kid. She second year and third year with the feature film It’s A Beauknew what it was like to work in the shadow of a towering tiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring another standup guy, legend. “There will be days people will tell you that you are Tom Hanks. not doing it right. But you need to look past FRIENDS: O the that and believe in the work you are doing and Owl and Daniel your own abilities,” he recalls her telling him. Tiger join Siefken He also listened to the wise words of somefor a meeting. one he’d never met but always admired—Rogers always had the right advice. “Listening to what Fred said, I only had to fill my own shoes,” Siefken says. “So people can like me just the way I am. That takes all the pressure off.”

rom the Fred Rogers Productions offices on the South Side, Siefken peers down at a tangle of buildings, churches, home-hugging hillsides, bridges—a quintessentially Pittsburgh cityscape. “It looks a lot like the neighborhood,” he says, the famous one that served as a backdrop to the show’s even more famous opening song. The miniature pieces of the original set that were filmed in the WQED studio a few miles away now are protected under glass in the lobby of the newer offices. Siefken can walk around the streets of Pittsburgh without getting stopped by devotees of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Peg + Cat, The Odd Squad, and Into the Woods, the shows the production company has launched. After all, he’s not the host.

Americans can’t agree on STORY TIME: Siefken reviews scripts for much these days, but everyone Donkey Hodie with seems to look up to Fred Rogsupervising producer ers. He stood for goodness and Kristin DiQuollo kindness and empathy, qualities in his office. that seem to be in short supply. “It’s amazing,” Siefken says of the sustained celebration. As president of Fred Rogers Productions, Siefken has overseen several anniversary projects, including a book of Rogers’ song lyrics for a new generation of youth who are rediscovering the TV host. He also helped plan an Emmy-nominated fiftieth-anniversary special for PBS stations, hosted by Pittsburgh-born actor Michael Keaton. While he’s protective of the brand, more often, Siefken just sits back and lets the warm feelings about Rogers bubble up spontaneously. When a nurse at a Pittsburgh hospital decided to knit red sweaters for the newborn babies for World Kindness Day on November 13, photos of the babies went viral. Siefken visited the hospital wearing a gray cardigan, one of the only times he has done so while on the job. “I don’t like to invite comparisons,” he says. True to his nature, he was off to the side during the press event, letting the cameras focus on Joanne Rogers, Fred’s widow. On the tail of the frenzy, the company announced a new spinoff show, which will debut in the winter of 2021. Siefken and Ellen Doherty, the Emmy-award winning chief creative 48 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

officer he recruited to the company, were batting around ideas for a puppet show based on the characters from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe back in 2016. They kept coming back to Donkey Hodie, the idealistic donkey à la Don Quixote who lives in a windmill. “We fell into giggles every time we saw Donkey Hodie,” Siefken says. In the new preschool show about persistence, Donkey Hodie—the granddaughter of the original character now known as “Grampy Hodie”—is a little girl donkey who dreams impossible preschool dreams. Rather than slaying a dragon, she works hard to get over her fears, like the monsters she imagines in her room at night. Doherty has been working on the series with David and Adam Rudman of Spiffy Pictures. Siefken reviews the scripts, but most of the time, he stays out of the way and lets the creative people create. “Ellen is ten times the producer I am,” he says. Doherty, in turn, says, “I love working with Paul. He is a great colleague, and he gives me a lot of freedom and support and makes it possible to make great stuff.”

iefken has a soft voice, earnest brown eyes, and short white hair. He’s a thoughtful speaker, often talking in full paragraphs with carefully delineated points. He doesn’t have the zany persona of some others in children’s entertainment. But if you look around the office of the forty-nine-year-old

ForeverDukePROFILE Siefken, it’s clear he is very much in touch with his inner child. As a child in New Orleans, he was a Mister Rogers kid who grew into a Sesame Street kid and then a Muppets kid. One day, his father took him to the carport, where they made Bert, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird figures out of wood and then painted them. “He helped me hold onto the show I loved,” says Siefken, the fourth of seven kids. All three of those Muppets figures are in his office, near photos of his wife and two teenage daughters and photos of Rogers. The Muppets occupy more prominent real estate than the twenty-three Emmys the company has won, some of which are on shelves inside a small side room. Despite his love of educational TV, Siefken didn’t grow up thinking he would one day create it. As a teenager he worked at summer camp and decided he wanted to become a teacher. After graduating from Duke with a major in English, he went on to teach the subject at Chapel Hill High School. About a year after graduating, he attended a party and met Anna Snowdon ’91, who had just come back from a stint with Teach For America. Siefken was the only person in the room she didn’t know, and, she says, the young man

Siefken got a teaching job in Atlanta, and although he liked the classroom, he had an itch to write. The twentyfour-year-old became an intern at a public-relations firm while searching for his next act, something that would help him fulfill his creative side. He landed an interview at the Cartoon Network and was handed a cartoon trivia test. Thanks to the Saturday mornings of cartoon-watching, he aced the test and landed a job in public relations.

here he bonded with his colleague Linda Simensky, who was on the programming and development side of the business and worked her way up to become senior vice president of original animation. When he showed her some one-act plays he had written for his brother’s theater company, she was impressed. “I remember thinking the writing was really good and I would totally hire him to work for my department,” Simensky says. He enjoyed marketing the story lines behind iconic cartoons. But one day, as a new father, he watched his

“Paul thinks in this three-dimensional way, seeing all the moving parts of a company.” daughter playing, and it hit him—maybe he could combine his love of kids’ TV with his teaching background. He applied to PBS KIDS in Washington, D.C., not knowing that Simensky had accepted a job there to develop new shows and oversee current series. Simensky immediately thought her friend Paul would be a perfect fit for her team. “I knew he could think creatively because he had written those plays. He was smart and interesting and worked well with others. Paul thinks in this three-dimensional way, seeing all the moving parts of a company.” In his nine years at PBS KIDS, he worked his way up to director of children’s programming and worked with the producers to manage the development of shows such as The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That, Sid the Science Kid, WordGirl, Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman, and Wild Kratts. For Wild Kratts, he worked with Martin Kratts ’89 and CREATING: Siefken listens as producer Chris Loggins describes the storyline for an upcoming episode of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.

had charisma. In what sounds like a scene from a romantic comedy, they started talking, and three days later, she brought him to meet her mother. They dated for a year, and when she moved to Atlanta to study graphic design at the Portfolio Center, he was so smitten he followed her. They were engaged a year to the day they met. Twenty-five years of marriage later, they are still the presidents of each other’s fan clubs.

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

ForeverDukePROFILE his brother, Chris, on developing the concept of the show. Originally the two brothers came up with an idea of an animated show that featured the animals. But Siefken believed kids would miss the exuberant, animal-loving pair who had hosted Zoboomafoo, featuring a playful little lemur from Duke’s Lemur Center. “You guys, you are the stars of the show,” Siefken said. “You should make the show you always dreamed of.” Their new concept featured a live-action intro by the Kratt brothers, leading to an animated version of the pair taking kids on animal adventures that humans never see, such as a battle between a giant squid and a sperm whale.

and how he took Rogers’ legacy so seriously. He also had a good rapport with the creative team, and in the tight-knit world of kids’ TV, he had lots of contacts. Isler was planning to retire, and he wanted to make sure the company built out of one visionary’s imagination and talent would remain in good hands. Of course, Siefken ultimately said yes to the job offer and worked as vice president of broadcast and digital media in 2013 before being named CEO in 2017. Anna Siefken also made a mark in their new city, becoming the inaugural executive director of the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University. She says she’s an extrovert to his introvert, and they have complemented and supported each other as they moved to different cities and jobs so they could both excel in their respective fields. “If we hadn’t met, our lives would be so different,” Anna says. “We made these giant leaps together.” Siefken’s biggest leap, of course, was taking over the company that Fred Rogers built, a place where kindness is baked into the DNA. “It’s nice to be at a place that is unapologetically earnest,” he says. “Nobody is trying to be cynical or be cool or put on airs. We can really be ourselves, and that is really freeing.” Though the community has welcomed Siefken, occasionally he runs into some people who second-guess his decisions for Rogers’ legacy. When Siefken and Peg + Cat creators Jennifer Oxley and Bill Aronson introduced the animated math show for preschoolers, a reporter balked. “You know, I knew Fred Rogers, and I don’t think Fred would make a show like this.” “Well, Fred didn’t make this show. Jennifer and Billy made this show,” Siefken replied. “It’s their vision.” The person who knew Fred the best—his widow, Joanne Rogers—believes that Siefken is the right man for the job. “He’s almost as nice as Fred,” she says. “He’s kind to old ladies. He was brought up well.” During the crush of media attention over the fiftieth anniversary, the ninety-oneyear-old Mrs. Rogers has been bombarded with interview requests, and Siefken, protective of her, tells her she doesn’t have to do them all. Though Siefken never met his company’s namesake, Joanne says, “I think Fred would have liked Paul. I think Fred would be proud.” n

“It’s nice to be at a place that is unapologetically earnest.” “It’s really great for the creative process when you can go back and forth. Paul is very smart and a creative guy,” Martin Kratts says. The formula has been a winning one for the show, which has been on the air for nine years. “It’s their show,” Siefken says. “I just helped shape it.” Siefken also collaborated on the development of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, traveling to Pittsburgh to discuss the show with creator Angela Santomero and the team at Fred Rogers Productions. He would review scripts and talk about ideas for episodes. The first episode was about Daniel’s excitement over his birthday, which turns to disappointment after he picks up his cake at the store and then drops it. Just as Rogers tapped the real emotions of preschoolers on his show, the Daniel spinoff explored themes such as disappointment. “If you spend any time with a two- or three-year-old, you quickly realize they spend more time being something other than happy. It’s not all rainbows and parties,” Siefken says. “Preschoolers watching Daniel Tiger say, ‘He gets me. I get sad and mad, and I get angry.’ ” Bill Isler, who was the first president and CEO of Fred Rogers Productions, was instantly impressed with Siefken

50 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Rouvalis is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in Parade, AARP the Magazine, Smithsonian.com, and other magazines.

DUKEISEVERYWHERE Australia Number of alumni:

261

When this photo was taken, Lexy Lattimore ’14 was visiting her sister in Sydney, Australia, following a two-and-ahalf-week tour with esteemed ballet company ProDanza in Havana, Cuba. Lattimore began training in classical ballet at eight and, after a few unconventional breaks, rediscovered the art in a Duke dance class. “If it weren’t for Duke and their incredible dance department, I would not be dancing professionally today…really, I wouldn’t be doing any of what I’m doing today if it weren’t for Duke,” she says. Lattimore is a recent recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize 2019 Verge Fellowship, which gives awards to top regional artists who are emerging with great impact in their careers.

Jillian Lattimore

Instagram: @lexyonpointe

ForeverDukeRETRO

THENNOW “It’s an invaluable service when you save someone’s home from foreclosure or you help a veteran with housing. And when you have people who devote their careers to that, it’s a great thing.”—John Rosenberg ’53, on his work with a legal services program based in West Virginia

“I think that my experience exploring criminal procedure, evidence, civil procedure, constitutional law, has prepared me to analyze the kinds of complex legal questions that judges deal with, especially in the majority of what they do, which is motion work.” —Justin Walker ’04, on his qualifications for his recent lifetime federal judge appointment

“I give them emotional support and confidence so that the birth defect itself does not define them.” —Rachel A. Ruotolo ’94, surgeon, who recently did a life-changing procedure on a child with a rare genetic disorder

52 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

From a blank slate to the Gothic Wonderland Travel documents map the origins of Duke’s two campuses. BY VALERIE GILLISPIE

e are now approaching Campus—eventually over 7,000 acres. the 100th anniversary These many parcels of what was then mostof the founding of Duke ly farmland became today’s West Campus University in 1924. As and Duke Forest. we celebrate this mileWhile the question of land was still unstone, it’s worth reflecting on how we came determined, planning for the campus deto have our two distinctive and beautiful sign continued. Presented with the unique campuses—and how different they could opportunity to create a whole new campus have looked. from scratch, President William P. Few and About seven years ago, among a large professor and comptroller Frank C. Brown group of rolled drawings in the University decided to take a road trip to various college Archives, we discovered a plan made by the campuses and keep a scrapbook of photos Horace Trumbauer architectural firm in and notes about architectural design. The 1923 or early 1924. In it, the then-existing delightful document of their travels inEast Campus is redesigned as an entire unicludes photos of campuses with Georgian versity. Imagine a chapel in the place Baldarchitecture, the style that the East Camwin Auditorium stands today, flanked by pus would eventually take, and the Gothic the schools of law and divinity. This plan was made for Imagine a chapel in the place Baldwin “Mr. J.B. Duke” Auditorium stands today, flanked by well before the announcement the schools of law and divinity. of The Duke Endowment, which suggests that he was thinking carefully architecture soon to be adopted for West about how Trinity College might grow Campus. One of the campuses visited was into a larger university well in advance of Princeton, and there are certainly some rehis transformative gift. The buildings are markable similarities between some Princpacked closely, and this drawing does not eton buildings and some Duke buildings. include a hospital or school of medicine, This similarity may be why a rumor about both of which were of considerable interest James B. Duke originally wishing to give to James B. Duke. his money to Princeton has survived for deIt must have become clear fairly quickly cades. Despite the rumor being completethat there was not enough room on East ly false, the similarities between Princeton and Duke’s West Campus seem to breathe Campus to realize all of the young univerlife into the story year after year. sity’s ambitions, and securing additional With Few’s and Brown’s input about the land around East Campus was challenging, desired aesthetics of the campus, along with given the residences and businesses already James B. Duke’s vision, Horace Trumbauer in place. Therefore, the university quietly and his chief designer, Julian Abele, created acquired land to the west and south of East

possible campus layouts. MAKING PLANS: Above, a page from The Abele Quad is now the scrapbook made so quintessentially Duke by President Few it’s hard to imagine it beand comptroller ing any other way, but Frank C. Brown the documentary evifeaturing their dence shows us it could Princeton visit; have been many other right, Trinity College ways, with not only difblueprints ferent building layouts but alternate ways to approach the campus by foot or vehicle, and even a large body of water— likely at the suggestion of James B. Duke—behind the chapel. One of the things we love most about our campus is the buildings and the sense of place they offer. Our carefully planned buildings and landscape create the visual harmony we experience on both campuses today. Thanks to the ambition and vision of leaders and architects almost 100 years ago,

Photography Duke University Archives

what began in the 1920s now carries us proudly into the next century. n Gillispie is the university archivist.

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

ForeverDukeMINI

Courtesy Elisha Renne

ven when published in book form, academic dissertations rarely get much attention. But “The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution,” which earned Julius S. Scott Ph.D. ’86 his doctorate, is the rare exception. After its completion in 1987, “The Common Wind” attracted interest from a few publishers. But Scott was not prepared to undertake the revisions that publishers and he himself felt were necessary. So, Scott went off to teach at the University of Michigan, and his dissertation went onto the shelf. Unlike most such works, however, “The Common Wind” didn’t stay there. Instead, it went on to become an underground history sensation based on handed-around photocopies and PDFs. Titled after a Wordsworth sonnet about doomed Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, “The Common Wind” is impeccably researched and written. It has gained a stellar reputation over the years, enough to be the subject of a 2008 conference at Michigan. Last year, Time magazine included the still-unpublished work in a list of “9 Books to Read for Black History Month.”

lesser thing because it hadn’t been published,” Scott says. “It was just this extraordinary thing that was kind of famous.” A native Texan, Scott did his undergraduate studies at Brown University. Wanting to return to the South for graduate school, he came to Duke intending to study the history of the nineteenth-century South. But classes at Duke rekindled his long-held interest in Haiti enough for him to take on an unusual aspect of its history: tracking how information changed hands among slaves, sailors, and freed blacks during the 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution. Peter H. Wood, Duke professor emeritus of history, served as Scott’s adviser. He admired his student's ambition in taking a leap of faith that enough information and documents were out there to support his research. It turned out there were, although it took a lot of time, work, and travel. “To be a historian takes a combination of literary and imaginative skills and the ability to do difficult archival research with patience and determination. He needed to learn Portuguese for this, so he did. More than anyone I know, he set his sights high. Books this good don’t come along very often.” Scott has endured a series of health problems since finishing The Common Wind, losing both legs and most of his eyesight to Type 1 diabetes. He has to undergo regular dialysis treatments, which take up enough time that he can no longer teach. So, he is essentially retired at age sixty-four. But his one published book has had enough long-term impact, before and after publication, to stand as a major accomplishment in the field. “I’ve been thinking about some things I’d like to do in adult education to maintain a teacher-student relationship because I enjoy that connection. I’ve got to figure it out," he says. “But people ask if I’m gonna do another book, I’m not sure that can happen. All this attention after so long was nice.”—David Menconi

“Books this good don’t come along very often.” Finally, three decades after Scott finished “The Common Wind,” the book publisher Verso contacted Scott about putting it into print for real. Yet his initial impulse was to decline the offer. “I was talking to them on the phone and saying, ‘No thank you,’ ” Scott recalls. “That’s when my partner asked me to put down the phone and said, ‘Look, your parents and other people in your family would be really proud to have this out. So why don’t you just go ahead?’ So, I said okay, reluctantly and with some skepticism. But I’m glad I did because it’s done well.” Indeed, it has. Since its November 2018 publication, The Common Wind has earned plaudits, including the MAAH Stone Book Award—a $25,000 prize for “an exceptional adult nonfiction book written in a literary style.” Scott and his book were feted this year in February at Duke, with a conference bringing together graduate students from his time on campus. “It has felt vindicating, although I never thought of it as a

54 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University

Thanks

For their generous lead sponsorship of the

2020 GALA

Honoring

Sarah Schroth Nasher Museum of Art Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director

upon her retirement

April 25, 2020 To purchase tickets visit

nasher.duke.edu/gala2020 or call 919-681-8515.

ForeverDuke In Memoriam

Robert J. Scollard ’48 of Dearborn, Mich., on Aug. 21, 2019. Anna Borden Sides ’48 of Danvers, Mass., on Sept. 30, 2019. Shirley Zittrouer Bryan ’49 of Coronado, Calif., on Aug. 1, 2019. Lindell A. Davidson B.S.M.E. ’49 of Norfolk, Va., on Nov. 1, 2019. Floyd A. Elliott ’49 of Greenville, S.C., on Sept. 5, 2019. Benjamin H. Flowe M.D. ’49 of Concord, N.C., on July 31, 2019. Ernest C. Hermann ’49 of Montpelier, Va., on Nov. 8, 2019. John T. Page Jr. J.D. ’49 of Richmond County, N.C., on Oct. 10, 2019. Anne Lecompte Pope ’49 of Louisville, Ky., on July 15, 2019. Robert W. Sugg ’49 of Durham on Oct. 29, 2019. Michael J. Wagner B.S.S.E. ’48 of Bradenton, Fla., on Oct. 11, 2019. Barbara Armstrong Wold ’49 of Danville, Ky., on Sept. 7, 2019.

1950s

MORE DUKE MEMORIES ONLINE

alumni.duke.edu 1940s

William R. Barrett A.M. ’40 of Florence, S.C., on Sept. 26, 2019. Nancy Omar Trenton ’41 of Bluefield, Va., on Aug. 21, 2019. Marion Lassen Deissler ’42 of Visalia, Calif., on Oct. 16, 2019. Elizabeth C. Hatheway ’42 of Farmington, Conn., on Aug. 20, 2019. James J. Hutson ’42, M.D. ’44 of Hialeah, Fla., on Oct. 6, 2019. Virginia A. Steininger Lawson ’42 of Wyomissing, Pa., on Aug. 9, 2019. John B. Ritter Jr. ’42 of Pittsburgh, on Sept. 16, 2019. John G. Fenimore B.S.M.E. ’43 of Madison, N.J., on Aug. 14, 2019. Alfred R. Gilbert A.M. ’43, Ph.D. ’49 of Wilmington, Del., on July 26, 2019. Laurence P. Maynard Jr. ’43 of Williamsport, Pa., on Aug. 18, 2019. Julia J. Morrill Ramage ’43 of La Mesa, Calif., on Aug. 16, 2019. Leonard J. Smith ’43 of Louisville, Ky., on Oct. 12, 2019. James G. Dalton Sr. ’44 of Atlanta, on July 3, 2019. E. Edward Newsom ’44 of Durham, on July 15, 2019. Mary Rodgers Schoen ’44 of Birmingham, Mich., on Nov. 11, 2019. Barbara F. Adams ’45 of Wilmington, N.C., on July 9, 2019. Irene Fonville Bagwell ’45 of Oviedo, Fla., on Aug. 17, 2019. Woodrow Batten H ’45, H ’47 of Smithfield, N.C., on Aug. 2, 2019. Arnold J. Koonce ’45 of High Point, N.C., on Oct. 7, 2019. Spinks H. Marsh ’45 of Minneapolis, on Oct. 20, 2019. Elsie Goodson Nicholas ’45 of Amelia Island, Fla., on July 23, 2019. Janet Wellons Smith ’45 of Durham, on Oct. 20, 2019. Louis R. Whisnant ’45 of Cornelius, N.C., on Oct. 22, 2019. Betty Akers Michael ’46 of Mount Airy, Md., on Nov. 14, 2019. Lawrence T. Queen Jr. ’46 of Winston-Salem, on July 6, 2019. Nancy Young Tanis ’46 of Cleveland, on July 8, 2019. Sally Addington Alne ’47 of Falls Church, Va., on Aug. 5, 2019. Doris Eileen Blaylock ’47 of Rome, Ga., on July 12, 2019. John W. Bossard ’47 of Little Rock, Ark., on Sept. 9, 2019. Wayne W. Coffin ’47 of Oklahoma City, on July 4, 2019. George F. Epps ’47 of Harvest, Ala., on Aug. 7, 2019. Edgar A. Fleetwood ’47 of Charlotte, on Sept. 24, 2019. Barbara Baynard Hubbell ’47 of St. Petersburg, Fla., on Aug. 1, 2019. Arthur P. Leonard ’47 of Dallas, on Sept. 13, 2019. Philip K.B. Lundeberg A.M. ’47, Ph.D. ’44 of Silver Spring, Md., on Oct. 3, 2019. Evelyn Davis Morgan ’47, M.S.N. ’72 of Lilburn, Ga., on Sept. 10, 2019. Frances E. Messner Nolte ’47 of New Branford, Conn., on Aug. 4, 2019. Evelyn D. Schmidt ’47, M.D. ’51 of Durham, on Aug. 15, 2019. Louise Williams Dennis ’48 of Durham, on July 16, 2019. Constance Williams Hogan ’48 of Macon, Ga., on Oct. 28, 2019. Carolyn Bunn Kenaston ’48, M.S. ’50 of Rockledge, Fla., on July 11, 2019. Jane Kornegay Kibler ’48 of Atlanta, on Sept. 12, 2019. 56 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

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Find links to full obituaries for Duke alumni at

Charles T. Alexander ’50 of Alexandria, Va., on Nov. 15, 2019. Marjorie Tyler Bargeron ’50 of Birmingham, Ala., on July 13, 2019. John E. Batten III J.D. ’50 of St. Loris, S.C., on Oct. 11, 2019. Joe C. Beam ’50 of Celebration, Fla., on Nov. 9, 2019. Robert M. Helm Jr. Ph.D. ’50 of Winston-Salem, on Sept. 25, 2019. Weldon B. MacDonald ’50 of Williamsburg, Va., on Sept. 11, 2019. Rebecca Burrum Matlock ’50 of Booneville, Tenn., on Nov. 9, 2019. Geane D. Talbot ’50 of Linwood, N.J., on Aug. 1, 2019. Jane Walton Vaden ’50 of Savannah, Ga., on July 7, 2019. Peter J. Wyckoff M.F. ’50 of Jackson, Calif., on Aug. 13, 2019. Mary Nicholson Allen ’51 of Greensboro, N.C., on Oct. 10, 2019. Robert A. Anderson ’51 of Rockledge, Fla., on July 22, 2019. John F. Bell M.F. ’51 of Corvallis, Ore., on Nov. 16, 2019. Dorothy Spicer Harward ’51 of Durham, on Oct. 28, 2019. George E. Shore ’51 of Cary, N.C., on Nov. 15, 2019. Joan Tate Van Horne ’51 of Poway, Calif., on Aug. 29, 2019. Erma Paden Whittington A.M. ’51 of Ellport, Pa., on Aug. 23, 2019. Ward L. Donat M.Div. ’52 of Roanoke, Va., on Sept. 25, 2019. Mary Coleman Logan ’52 of Toano, Va., on Aug. 13, 2019. Dudley M. Norton ’52 of Williamsburg, Pa., on July 30, 2019. Virginia Daniels Baker ’53, B.S.N. ’76 of Raleigh, on July 2, 2019. Jack L. Baylin ’53 of Baltimore, on Aug. 1, 2019. Carol Hampe Bentley ’53 of Perrysburg, Ohio, on Oct. 20, 2019. Robert B. Berger ’53, J.D. ’59 of Wilmore, Ky., on Sept. 25, 2019. Harold D. Bolick ’53 of Burlington, N.C., on Oct. 1, 2019. Margaret Bishop Fullerton ’53 of Fresno, Calif., on Aug. 28, 2019. Ralph W. Gable A.M. ’53, Ph.D. ’56 of Charlotte, on July 5, 2019. Ellen Hennessey Heller ’53 of Transylvania County, N.C., on July 18, 2019. Clarence E. Howard ’53 of Lillington, N.C., on Aug. 12, 2019. Christian S. Lacaruba ’53 of Columbia, S.C., on Oct. 26, 2019. Bettie Atkinson Lawrence ’53 of Macon, Ga., on Aug. 7, 2019. Edwina S. Maitland Letcher ’53 of Ramsey, N.J., on Sept. 1, 2019. Julia Ling H ’53 of Durham, on May 28, 2018. James B. Richmond ’53 of Durham, on Oct. 21, 2019. Daniel M. Schores Jr. B.Div. ’53 of Sherman, Texas, on Aug. 19, 2019. John J. Allen ’54 of Danville, Ky., on Aug. 13, 2019. James P. Farber ’54 of Middletown, Md., on July 25, 2019. Louise E. Friend M.D. ’54 of Monterey County, Calif., on July 12, 2019. Nancy Gray Hodgin ’54 of Moorestown, N.J., on Oct. 5, 2019. Hans K. Kandlbinder A.M. ’54 of Upper Bavaria, Germany, on July 25, 2019. Alfred E. Kerby B.S.S.E. ’54 of Toano, Va., on Nov 10, 2019. Martha Anderson Meunier ’54 of Charlotte, on July 17, 2019. Frank S. Wamsley ’54 of Lawton, Okla., on July 28, 2019. Elizabeth Calkins Davis ’55 of Pullman, Wash., on Sept. 22, 2019. Irwin Fridovich Ph.D. ’55 of Durham, on Nov. 2, 2019. Gertrude Croft Gillespie M.R.E. ’55 of Pearisburg, Va., on Aug. 23, 2019. Frank J. Koonts ’55 of Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 18, 2019. Howard R. Lasher Jr. ’55 of Sandy Springs, Ga., on Aug. 6, 2019. Peter P. Van Blarcom ’55 of Philadelphia, on Nov. 1, 2019. Rhett P. Walker H ’55 of Birmingham, Ala., on Nov. 16, 2019. Mason M. Willis B.Div. ’55, Th.M. ’61 of Denver, on Aug. 11, 2019. Carl E. Bentz ’56 of Savannah, Ga., on July 29, 2019. Lawrence C. Bliss Ph.D. ’56 of Bellevue, Wash., on July 7, 2019.

Carole Killian Clauss ’56 of Stratford, Conn., on Oct. 21, 2019. James W. Farlow ’56 of Gainesville, Ga., on July 24, 2019. Robert H. Gibbons Jr. ’56, B.Div. ’60 of Indianapolis, on July 18, 2019. James R. Jackson M.D. ’56 of Bermuda Run, N.C., on Sept. 8, 2019. Robert S. Martin Jr. ’56 of Wilmington, N.C., on Oct. 26, 2019. Harriet Gould Nesbitt ’56 of Amelia Island, Fla., on Oct. 26, 2019. George W. Paulson M.D. ’56, H ’59 of Columbus, Ohio, on July 25, 2019. Marie Burns Robeson B.S.N.Ed. ’56 of Durham, on Aug. 19, 2019. Richard T. Shankweiler J.D. ’56 of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Oct. 9, 2019. Emmett J. Stephens M.F. ’56 of Florence, S.C., on Oct. 28, 2019. Jean Foster Wilkinson A.M. ’56 of Acton, Mass., on Oct. 7, 2019. Joan Earle Condoret ’57 of Chapel Hill, on Aug. 12, 2019. Robert N. Ellington M.D. ’57, H ’62 of Burlington, N.C., on Sept. 20, 2019. Anne J. Grady Hocker-Reece ’57 of Camden, S.C., on Aug. 26, 2019. Raymond C. Lauber ’57 of Natick, Mass., on Sept. 28, 2019. L. William McLain Jr. ’57, M.D. ’61, H ’62, H ’65 of Raleigh, on Nov. 11, 2019. Robert F. Richards ’57 of Seven Fields, Pa., on Nov. 6, 2019. William R. Smith ’57 of Oldsmar, Fla., on Aug. 22, 2019. Elaine S. Berson Ph.D. ’58 of Neptune, N.J., on Oct. 20, 2019. Rollin T. Curran ’58 of Rockingham County, N.C., on Oct. 7, 2019. Guy Dillard ’58 of Fort Pierce, Ga., on Oct. 21, 2019. Thomas R. Ferrall ’58 of Pittsburgh, on July 2, 2019. Janet Ketner Hunter ’58 of St. Petersburg, Fla., on Aug. 23, 2019. Karen Black Miller ’58 of Etowah, N.C., on Oct. 27, 2019. Virginius O. Robertson III ’58 of Columbia, S.C., on July 3, 2019. Barbara Becker Sieg ’58 of Ellicott City, Md., on Oct. 24, 2019. Peggy Jane Stanton A.M. ’58 of Henderson, N.C., on Oct. 8, 2019. Cary Smith Stinespring ’58 of Sarasota, Fla., on Oct. 1, 2019. Thomas T. Wright ’58 of Clinton, N.C., on Oct. 7, 2019. Elizabeth Register Davis ’59 of Winston-Salem, on Oct. 19, 2019. Gayle Summers Gillies-Mize ’59 of San Diego, on Aug. 27, 2019. Chester S. Giltz Jr. ’59 of Lyndhurst, Ohio, on Sept. 1, 2019.

Karil Newman Hammer ’59 of Atlantic Beach, Fla., on Sept. 28, 2019. H. Thomas Robins B.S.M.E. ’59 of Cave Springs, Ga., on Nov. 11, 2019. Bruce M. Schwaegler ’59 of Lebanon, N.H., on Oct. 28, 2019. Stephen R. Shaffer ’59 of Atlanta, on Aug. 14, 2019. Elizabeth McBride Short ’59 of Auburn, Calif., on Oct. 9, 2019. Herbert A. Taylor III ’59 of Memphis, Tenn., on Sept. 6, 2019.

1960s

Judith A. Huck ’60 of Birmingham, Ala., on Oct. 21, 2019. Gail Foster Kirk ’60 of Frederick, Md., on July 1, 2019. Michael B. McGee ’60 of Montrose, Colo., on Aug. 16, 2019. Vernon H. Rochelle ’60 of Morehead City, N.C., on Aug. 15, 2019. Kenneth J. Swisher M.F. ’60 of Fayetteville, Pa., on Nov. 20, 2019. Harry T. Tully M.D. ’60 of Redding, Calif., on Aug. 1, 2019. Roswell F. Vaughan III ’60 of Houston, on Oct. 18, 2019. David J. Yarington ’60 of Farmington, Conn., on Aug. 3, 2019. Charles V. Bryant B.Div. ’61 of Smithfield, N.C., on Nov. 7, 2019. John A. Feagin Jr. M.D. ’61 of Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Sept. 1, 2019. Bruce G. Leonard ’61 of Raleigh, on Oct. 28, 2019. Walter F. Mueggler Ph.D. ’61 of Logan, Utah, on Aug. 4, 2019. Eleanor Page Orewyler B.S.N. ’61 of Los Alamitos, Calif., on Oct. 22, 2019. John F. Pruess M.F. ’61 of Tigard, Ore., on Aug. 24, 2019. Richard E. Reynolds ’61 of Augusta, Ga., on Aug. 5, 2019. Richard R. Swann ’61, J.D. ’63 of Orlando, Fla., on Aug. 21, 2019. David C. Watkins M.S. ’61 of Marietta, Ga., on Oct. 1, 2019. H. Lynn Chenault ’62 of Roanoke, Va., on Sept. 7, 2019. Comer L. Donnell ’62 of Nashville, Tenn., of Oct. 24, 2019. Hugh E. Jones A.M. ’62 of Chambersburg, Pa., on Nov. 10, 2019. Richard A. Obenour H ’62 of Knoxville, Tenn., on Aug. 12, 2019. Gail R. Williams M.D. ’62 of Pike Road, Ala., on July 14, 2019. Margaret Wheland Couch ’63 of Gainesville, Fla., on July 30, 2019. Evelyn R. Fulbright Ed.D. ’63 of Raleigh, on Nov. 1, 2019.

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DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

New to the Collection

nasher.duke.edu Derek Fordjour, Signing Day (detail), 2019. Acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel, and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas; 74 1⁄2 × 50 1⁄2 inches (189.23 × 128.27 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Gift of Blake Byrne, A.B.’57. © Derek Fordjour. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

ForeverDuke Betsy Rowland Goodwin ’63 of Weston, Conn., on July 9, 2019. Harry L. Griffin Jr. LL.B. ’63 of Serenbe, Ga., on July 9, 2019. Charlotte E. Smith Masini ’63 Hancock, Mich., on Nov. 13, 2019. Joyce Cummings Tucker ’63 of Princeton, N.J., on July 12, 2019. Laura Carver Woodworth ’63 of Crozet, Va., on Oct. 12, 2019. M. Julian Duttera Jr. ’64, M.D. ’68 of LaGrange, Ga., on Oct. 4, 2019. Elson T. Harmon A.M. ’64, Ph.D. ’73 of Bar Mills, Maine, on July 18, 2019. Ted L. Lightle M.S. ’64 of Lexington, S.C., on Sept. 5, 2019. Richard C. McMillan M.Ed. ’64, Ed.D. ’70 of Danville, Va., on Sept. 19, 2019. Thomas H. Melton ’64, LL.B. ’67 of Denver, on Sept. 3, 2019. Brian E. Smith ’64 of Phoenix, on Oct. 27, 2019. Jerry H. Smith ’64 of Staunton, Va., on Aug. 19, 2019. Lois R. Allen M.Ed. ’65 of Wilkins Township, Pa., on Sept. 3, 2019. C. Neal Andrews ’65 of Ventura, Calif., on Aug. 4, 2019. Andrew Q. Blane Ph.D. ’65 of New York, on Sept. 6, 2019. Judith Ewell ’65 of Williamsburg, Va., on July 29, 2019. David L. Fowler ’65 of Martinsburg, W.Va., on Oct. 19, 2019. Bruce W. Hodgins Ph.D. ’65 of Peterborough, Ontario, on Aug. 8, 2019. Elaine Mozer Kauvar A.M. ’65 of Denver, on Oct. 10, 2019. Martin M. Oken M.D. ’65 of Edina, Minn., on July 23, 2019. Louis H. Woodard B.Div. ’65 of Bermuda Run, N.C., on July 1, 2019. Harold L. Davison M.A.T. ’66 of Raleigh, on Nov. 12, 2019. Lanny L. Hiday ’66 of Windsor, N.C., on Aug. 11, 2019. Dianne Komminsk ’66 of New Bremen, Ohio, on Oct. 5, 2019. Roger Waters ’66 of New Castle, Del., on Oct. 26, 2019. Stephen J. Wilson ’66 of Vancouver, Wash., on Oct. 28, 2019. Johnny M. Avery M.A.T. ’67 of Dunn, N.C., on Aug. 10, 2019. William J. Baggs ’67, M.D. ’70 of Carlsbad, Calif., on Aug. 9, 2019. James F. Bowman M.S. ’67 of Burlington, N.C., on Oct. 31, 2019. Benton H. Box D.F. ’67 of Clemson, S.C., on July 28, 2019. Robert R. Cole A.M. ’67, Ph.D. ’71 of New York, on Sept. 18, 2019. Henry Elmon May Jr. Th.M. ’67 of Winston-Salem, on Oct. 18, 2019. Wilhelmina M. Reuben-Cooke ’67 of Alexandria, Va., on Oct. 22, 2019.

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Vade G. Rhoades H ’67 of Winston-Salem, on Oct. 26, 2019. Susan Henney Voss ’67 of State College, Pa., on Sept. 26, 2019. Patricia Webb Levering ’68 of Davidson, N.C., on Aug. 24, 2019. J. Bruce Lindeman II Ph.D. ’68 of Little Rock, Ark., on Aug. 8, 2019. David M. Hillenbrand ’69 of Savannah, Ga., on Sept. 18, 2019. Steven C. Lambert ’69 of Natchez, Miss., on Oct. 7, 2019. Katherine M. Oglesby A.M. ’69 of Olympia, Wash., on July 14, 2019. John W. Olson ’69 of Tega Cay, S.C., on Oct. 24, 2019.

1970s

Paul M. Glenn Jr. J.D. ’70 of Jacksonville, Fla., on July 7, 2019. John T. Benson J.D. ’71 of St. George, Utah, on Nov. 14, 2019. Edward F. Crowley Jr. ’71 of Wake Forest, N.C., on July 21, 2019. James C. Grasee M.A.T. ’71 of Green Bay, Wis., on Aug. 11, 2019. Alan G. Keith J.D. ’71 of Kansas City, Mo., on Oct. 4, 2019. Peter F. King ’71 of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 29, 2019. Bonnelyn P. Lorenzen M.S.N. ’71 of Davenport, Iowa, on July 2, 2019. Linda J. Burdette ’72 of Weirton, W.Va., on Oct. 15, 2019. Richard J. Costello M.A.T. ’72 of Mount Dora, Fla., on Nov. 1, 2019. Thomas L. Drew ’72 of Durham, on Aug. 30, 2019. Bobby J. Gormus Ph.D. ’72 of Covington, La., on Oct. 19, 2019. Leonard D. Lilley Jr. Ed.D. ’72 of Richmond, Va., on Sept. 27, 2019. Monica Murphy M.A.T. ’72 of Latham, N.Y., on Aug. 5, 2019. Stuart A. Albright J.D. ’73 of Gastonia, N.C., on Nov. 2, 2019. Sharon L. Reese ’73 of Fayetteville, Ark., on Oct. 12, 2019. William M. Russell ’73 of White Hall, Md., on Oct. 12, 2019. William K. Schapiro ’73 of Baltimore, on Aug. 13, 2019. Thomas F. Woolley ’74 of Tuscon, Ariz., on July 19, 2019. Laurence D. Colbert J.D. ’75 of Media, Pa., on Oct. 12, 2019. Richard E. Johe Ph.D. ’75 of Winston-Salem, on Aug. 2, 2019. Morris W. Johnson Jr. M.Ed. ’75 of Kannapolis, N.C., on Oct. 8, 2019. David M. Wilmot M.H.A. ’75 of Las Vegas, on Oct. 30, 2019. Mary L. Botter B.S.N. ’76 of Middlebury, Vt., on July 12, 2019. Gary W. Hines M.Div. ’76 of Louisville, Ky., on Sept. 4, 2019. Frances Garrison Craddock ’77 of Graham, N.C., on Sept. 3, 2019. Ralph W. Matthews M.Ed. ’77 of Belton, Texas, on Nov. 2, 2019. Milford Oxendine Jr. M.Div. ’77 of Pembroke, N.C., on Aug. 2, 2019. Wylie S. Quinn III Ph.D. ’77 of Chapel Hill, on Oct. 25, 2019. Peter I. Sheft ’77 of Long Island, N.Y., on Aug. 28, 2019. Margaret K. Stolee A.M. ’77, Ph.D. ’82 of Geneseo, N.Y., on Oct. 9, 2019. William A. McKenney III ’78 of Richmond, Ky., on Oct. 27, 2019. Peggy I. Daniello Shields ’78 of Greensboro, N.C., on Sept. 16, 2019. Richard W. Tauscher ’78, M.F. ’79 of Louisville, Ky., on Aug. 7, 2019. Nancy Richmond Bennett ’79 of Las Vegas, on Aug. 1, 2019. Elizabeth Fitzgerald Brown ’79 of Virginia Beach, Va., on Aug. 27, 2019. Walter S. Howes ’79 of Sterling, Va., on July 23, 2019. Mark A. Kaish ’79 of Atlanta, on Sept. 13, 2019. Bradley L. Ward M.D. ’79 of Taylorsville, Ga., on Aug. 17, 2019.

1980s

Douglas W. Hamway H ’80 of Atlanta, on Sept. 5, 2019. Maria C. Iacovazzi J.D. ’80 of Binghamton, N.Y., on Sept. 4, 2019. John Livick-Moses M.Div. ’80 of Middlebrook, Va., on July 25, 2019. Thomas K. Townsend ’80 of St. Louis, on Oct. 4, 2019. Darrel R. Wilder Ph.D. ’80 of Sun Lakes, Ariz., on Nov. 10, 2019. James D. Burch ’81 of Tignall, Ga., on Oct. 8, 2019. Jonathan D. Christenbury M.D. ’81, H ’81, H ’85 of Charlotte, on July 19, 2019. Thomas A. Guarisco ’81 of New Orleans, on Aug. 27, 2019. Ronald H. Hannon ’81 of Moosic, Pa., on Sept. 27, 2019. Cynthia L. West Wittmer J.D. ’81 of Raleigh, on July 20, 2019. Richard R. Hofstetter J.D. ’82 of Indianapolis, on Oct. 1, 2019. Anthony J. Martino ’82 of Roseto, Pa., on July 12, 2019. Eric C. Shoaf ’82 of Charlotte, on Aug. 24, 2019. Gregory S. Drumheller H ’83 of Ponce Inlet, Fla., on Oct. 2, 2019. Andrew K. Miller M.B.A. ’85 of Budd Lake, N.J., on July 17, 2019. John A. Morris ’87 of Rowayton, Conn., on Oct. 4, 2019. DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

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Alice Higdon Prater J.D. ’87 of Birmingham, Ala., on Nov. 15, 2019. James E. Saltz III ’87 of Santa Fe, N.M., on Aug. 25, 2019. Charles S. Wilson-Parsons M.Div. ’87 of Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., on Oct. 20, 2019. Brian D. Bernard ’88 of Wilton, Conn., on July 3, 2019. Mark A. Goldstein M.B.A. ’89 of Roswell, Ga., on Oct. 5, 2019. May L. Griebel H ’89, H ’90 of Little Rock, Ark., on Sept. 14, 2019. Patricia L. Wilson J.D. ’89 of Linville, N.C., on Oct. 2, 2019.

1990s

Stephen W. Brackett M.B.A. ’90 of Chapel Hill, on Sept. 30, 2019. Brant G. Kersey B.S.E. ’90 of Knoxville, Tenn., on July 25, 2019. Scott L. Hyden M.B.A. ’91 of Coppell, Texas, on July 5, 2019. Chet Singh Ranawat ’93 of Miami, on Sept. 16, 2019. Robert C. Swinson Jr. ’93 of Wilmington, Del., on Oct. 4, 2019. Michael R. Lofgren ’95 of Oak Park, Ill., on Oct. 28, 2019. Marjorie Jacobs Moore M.S.N. ’96 of Hallsboro, N.C., on Sept. 26, 2019. Sara Maria Danius Ph.D. ’97 of Stockholm, on Oct. 12, 2019. Darlene Gray Hann M.Div. ’98 of Waynesburg, Pa., on Oct. 17, 2019. Tara Byram Ennis M.B.A. ’99 of Hopewell Township, N.J., on July 14, 2019. Philip E. Warner A.M. ’99 of Salem, N.Y., on Oct. 9, 2019.

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Rebecca J. Huguley M.Div. ’02 of Union, S.C., on Oct. 25, 2019. David L. Swanson A.M. ’06 of Durham, on Sept. 2, 2019. Sapna Thakkar Amin M.P.P. ’08 of Nashville, Tenn., on July 11, 2019. Bridgette K. Fleming M.B.A. ’09 of Dallas, on Aug. 13, 2019.

2010s

Kara R. Ezrin M.H.S. ’14 of Miami, on Oct. 14, 2019. David Francazio J.D. ’14 of Smithfield, R.I., on Sept. 5, 2019. Kate E. Spillane M.S.N. ’18 of Roanoke, Va., on Nov. 2, 2019. Vincent Zhu ’19 of Arlington, Va., on Aug. 23, 2019.

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Profiles in Purpose

”

HENOCK ASAYE

Public Policy & Global Health hile Henock Duke 2020 Asaye was born and raised in Las Vegas, his sense of home and community extends much farther away. Henock’s parents emigrated from Ethiopia before he was born, leaving a country wracked by decades of civil unrest—but also family and home. Ethiopia remains a central component of Henock’s family network, identity, and ultimately his life’s ambitions.

Growing up in the shadow of the glitz and spectacle of the Las Vegas strip, Henock was keenly aware of how resources were distributed. His public schools were consistently funded at some of the lowest rates in the nation, with accordingly low rates of graduation. Henock did well in school—partly driven by a conviction to make his family proud but also simply to move away from the pervasive lack of resources he saw at school. When he was accepted to Duke, he imagined pursuing a pre-med track and becoming a doctor. Henock wanted to help people, particularly those with limited means. Once at Duke, however, Henock quickly realized that he didn’t actually want to become a doctor. He could potentially do more good in the world by shaping health policy. Working in the global health field also connected his Duke experiences with his ancestral home of Ethiopia. With some advisors and friends, he set up a non-profit to take surplus medical supplies from Duke to rural hospitals in Ethiopia, where those extra items might be desperately needed. He was awarded a Kenan Summer Fellowship to better understand the ways in which rural doctors in Ethiopia distributed the resources Henock’s organization made available to them. When there wasn’t enough, how did they prioritize and ration care? Upon returning to campus, Henock connected with Citizenship Lab, part of the Kenan Refugee Project focused on working with resettled refugee youths in Durham to build the capacity to advocate for what need in their new home city. Henock found that having new experiences in different cultural contexts guided his

“

The balance between both acting in the best interest of a country and making a profit has always been an uncomfortable ethical hurdle.

career trajectory. "My thoughts about careers in international development has changed over the years. The balance between both acting in the best interest of a country and making a profit has always been an uncomfortable ethical hurdle.”

In the spring, Henock enrolled in the Kenan Purpose Program in order to have a space to think about his next steps. He wanted to continue to be involved with development work in Ethiopia, but his work in Durham had also made clear that healthcare wasn’t necessarily the vehicle for doing good work for him. For his Kenan Purpose Program Summer Fellowship, he went back to Ethiopia but focused more on the policy side of healthcare. In addition, he filmed a documentary capturing the scarcity of resources faced by many hospitals in Ethiopia. Going back was clarifying. His return to Ethiopia allowed him to solidify connections made the previous summer. At the same time, he was covering similar terrain from a new perspective, working to compile a report on the state of rural healthcare in Ethiopia. This more policy-oriented approach allowed him to see how potential technological innovations could make a huge difference in the lives of many in rural Ethiopia. He hopes to leverage business, non-governmental, and governmental sectors to make some ambitious ideas a reality: “By working with locals to provide technological changes—using drones to distribute equipment, instant messaging services for immediate supply needs, or building medical manufacturing plants throughout the country—we can expand how the country does business.” To bring some of those proposals to fruition, Henock will continue to expand his skills in international development and business, all with an eye towards improving lives of millions of Ethiopians.

“The ability to reconnect with my cultural heritage to instill systematic change through Kenan - has allowed for me to gain a greater perspective on the importance of becoming a global citizen.”

Don’t know where to go next. Know why. The Kenan Institute for Ethics — a “think and do” tank committed to address real world ethical challenges facing individuals, organizations, and societies worldwide — helps students like Henock ﬁnd their passion and forge meaningful paths beyond Duke.

dukeethics.org DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2019

WORKINPROGRESS

Kyle Harvey

A LOOK AT STUDENT PROJECTS AS THEY DEVELOP

AS A MAJOR in both computer science and visual arts, I had been eager to design a project that merged these two fields through the use of machine learning. I quickly gravitated toward doing a black-and-white relief print and then experimenting using other mediums in combination. I decided to use colored screen prints layered underneath the relief prints and high-resolution scans processed by generative machine-learning algorithms to create new versions to display alongside the original print. Each of these generated images will highlight the use of different styles to convey the same

content, hopefully highlighting different emotional aspects of the prints to create a unique experience. After I finalized the process, all that was left was to choose a subject. I wanted something that was innately

FLORAL: Above, linoleum image of “The Ascension,” below, “Noah’s Ark” print

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emotional and dramatic. So, I looked through a few museum catalogues and quickly became enamored with many of the depictions of biblical scenes by artists of the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque period like Giotto, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Caravaggio. I wanted to do my take on these biblical scenes through an extended metaphor derived from Luke 12:27-28, which describes the beauty of flowers, and draw an analogy between the beauty of the flower and the amount of love God has for humans. I decided to do a series of prints that feature seemingly innocuous scenes

of flowers that still depict the dramatic emotions inherent to the Bible. Hand-carved relief prints take a lot of patience and time, especially when working on larger scales. I started by creating digital sketches of each of my five prints and then began the tedious process of transferring the images onto the linoleum before I could start carving. Although it’s not a short process, and I’ve ended up with far too many nicks and cuts on my hands to count, I’ve found few things as satisfying as peeling back the sheet of paper from my relief block to reveal my first print, fresh off the press. n

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DUKE MAGAZINE • WINTER 2019

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WINTER 2019

An AIDS vaccine isn’t in hand. But lessons learned from fifteen years of probing by a global team led by Barton Haynes makes it seem possible.

M AG A Z I N E

Winter 2019

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A BOLD CHOICE